Donna and John are a husband and wife who attend the ‘Success through Sport’ project.
They have been married for two years and met on a ‘derby day’ night out in South Manchester.
John and Donna live separately, John lives in assisted housing with lots of life skill support while Donna has been able to live independently for two years. They are working towards co-habiting in the near future.
Donna is now a volunteer at the project; she takes responsibility for the registration of participants, the statistics sheet and all football equipment.
She has just attended a Safeguarding Children in Football course and an Emergency Aid course through her voluntary work with Manchester City.
John attended the same course and completed the FA Level One Coaching course which he passed. He is now able to coach children as an assistant with guidance from a more experienced coach.
He has also attended some healthy living and employability workshops at City and is keeping a food diary at the moment.
Donna enjoys her involvement with city and has taken on the extra responsibility of collecting the funds for the Sunday league community team and paying for the facilities and the referee.
“It’s helped John with this speech, he’s happy, he’s laughing with everybody. I’m a first aider for Sunday League now,” she smiled.
“We love doing our voluntary work at City and being part of a team, we are both made up about passing the courses and are looking forward to receiving our certificates. Hopefully we will both be able to live together soon too.”
When interviewed by City TV Donna commented: “Without the programme we wouldn’t be like this at all, we would’ve been miserable and sat at home twiddling our thumbs and since then we’ve been happy and enjoying ourselves. In the future we want to volunteer for City, we want to do more!”
For more information on any of City in the Community’s Health & Activity programs please visit mcfc.co.uk/community, email Lisa.kimpton@mcfc.co.uk, or call 0161 438 7715.
Tell us your #CityStory on our MCFC Facebook page, Twitter account or e-mail: CityStory@mcfc.co.uk
