- By Rich Miller
I have been writing a weekly blog for almost two years now and I always try to keep up with any comments that people make about the weekly post, and I appreciate every one that I get. Last week, I got an e-mail from a lady named Sara who is with an organization that I had never heard about. After reading about the organization, I learned that they have been around since 1877. In the e-mail, she mentioned several things that they had going on this summer and wanted to know if I would help get the word out.
The organization is The Fresh Air Fund and over the years they have provided free summer vacations for over 1.7 million New York City children from low income areas. Currently, they are sending about 10,000 kids a year to 13 different states and Canada for them to get away and learn what life is like outside the city. The Fresh Air Friendly Town Program is for boys and girls from 6 to 18 years of age. They spend two weeks in the country with a host family that has volunteered for the program. Sara explained to me that a lot of the kids get invites back from their host family year after year. They continue that until they are 18, with great lifelong friendships being made. The host families are not paid; they open their homes out of the goodness of their hearts to give these kids a vacation they wouldn’t otherwise get. There is also a fresh air camp that is held five times a year in Fishkill, New York.
Sara also asked me to mention that the Fresh Air Fund is in need of host families for this summer. Host families are volunteers who open their hearts and homes to a child from the city to give them a Fresh Air experience that can change lives. Also, they just received a tremendous offer by a very generous donor. Any gift given from now until the end of June will be matched dollar-for-dollar.
They do have a couple of websites that you can get a lot more information from than I am capable of giving you freshairfundhost.com and www.freshair.org. This is a non-profit organization that I can’t believe I have never heard anything about and I wanted to try and let our readers know about a great organization that is changing kids lives.
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