Hosting a child for the Fresh Air Fund program has become a sort of tradition for Penfield woman Maria Casapini.
The Fresh Air Fund is an organization that allows children from low-income households in New York City to be paired with a host volunteer family in the suburbs for two weeks.
For the last six years, Casapini has hosted Alexia Jones, 15.
She used to live in the Bronx, but Alexia moved outside the city to Middletown, where she lives with her mother and older brother. She first signed up with the Fresh Air Fund when she was 9, and has been coming to stay with Casapini for the last six summers.
A change of scenery
Why does she look forward to these visits?
“The people here are much nicer,” said Alexia. “Everyone’s just more friendly.”
She and Casapini (her “second mom”) share a special friendship. They use their time together to enjoy summer’s simple pleasures, like swimming, strawberry picking, and going to the mall.
The experience has also been educational.
Last summer, Alexia went to a farm in Shortsville where she excitedly watched a baby calf being born.
And this year, knowing that Alexia, a high honors student at her high school, wants to become a pediatrician, her host mom found a summer program offered at the University of Rochester that allowed Alexia to take two classes on a scholarship, one in law and the other in dentistry.
Her mother Andrea Jones works full-time as a city bus driver. In some ways, it’s just as exciting for her when Alexia calls to tell her about her new experiences.
“There’s so much that she loves to learn, and she's willing to learn about anything new,” said Jones, who encouraged other parents to send their kids. “It's a good experience to broaden their minds. They're having fun, and they're learning at the same time.”
Getting involved
Casapini is the chair of the Fresh Air host program in Penfield. She has two grown children, and before her husband Tom passed away, they had foster children for many years.
She first got involved with the program after they moved to the area from Illinois in 2003.
After convincing several of her friends to become host parents, Casapini said there was soon a large group of visiting kids who became close friends who “traveled around like an amoeba.”
Hosting a child for the Fresh Air Fund program has become a sort of tradition for Penfield woman Maria Casapini.
The Fresh Air Fund is an organization that allows children from low-income households in New York City to be paired with a host volunteer family in the suburbs for two weeks.
For the last six years, Casapini has hosted Alexia Jones, 15.
She used to live in the Bronx, but Alexia moved outside the city to Middletown, where she lives with her mother and older brother. She first signed up with the Fresh Air Fund when she was 9, and has been coming to stay with Casapini for the last six summers.
A change of scenery
Why does she look forward to these visits?
“The people here are much nicer,” said Alexia. “Everyone’s just more friendly.”
She and Casapini (her “second mom”) share a special friendship. They use their time together to enjoy summer’s simple pleasures, like swimming, strawberry picking, and going to the mall.
The experience has also been educational.
Last summer, Alexia went to a farm in Shortsville where she excitedly watched a baby calf being born.
And this year, knowing that Alexia, a high honors student at her high school, wants to become a pediatrician, her host mom found a summer program offered at the University of Rochester that allowed Alexia to take two classes on a scholarship, one in law and the other in dentistry.
Her mother Andrea Jones works full-time as a city bus driver. In some ways, it’s just as exciting for her when Alexia calls to tell her about her new experiences.
“There’s so much that she loves to learn, and she's willing to learn about anything new,” said Jones, who encouraged other parents to send their kids. “It's a good experience to broaden their minds. They're having fun, and they're learning at the same time.”
Getting involved
Casapini is the chair of the Fresh Air host program in Penfield. She has two grown children, and before her husband Tom passed away, they had foster children for many years.
She first got involved with the program after they moved to the area from Illinois in 2003.
After convincing several of her friends to become host parents, Casapini said there was soon a large group of visiting kids who became close friends who “traveled around like an amoeba.”
First-time host families can take up to three children. Visiting kids between ages of 6-12 can be paired with a new family. Children can then return to stay with the same host family until they turn 18.
Casapini said there is always a need for more families to host, especially minority families or those who speak Spanish.
In some cases, children show up without knowing whether they will have a host family at all.
“We have New York City children who show up at the bus station who haven’t yet been matched with a family, just hoping there are last minute cancellations, or a child doesn’t show up,” she said.
How it all started
The Fresh Air Fund was started by a New York City minister in 1877, when industrialization made the city air dirty and hard to breathe.
The simple idea of letting city children visit willing volunteers outside the city has since taken hold, as more than 1.7 million kids have had a free summer vacation through the host program and other Fresh Air camps since the program began.
Jenny Morgenthau, the Fresh Air executive director, said many host families either wait for their own children to grow up before volunteering, while others choose to host when their children are still young.
“They think of it as being an enriching experience for the family,” she said.
And indeed, the regular living environments for visiting kids are usually starkly different from what suburban kids experience.
Younger kids especially appreciate concrete things like learning to swim or being able to see the stars at night.
“They talk about little things they’re exposed to that we take for granted, like playing in the backyard without getting your baseball glove stolen,” said Morgenthau.
It’s already made an impact, and not just on the children, she added.
“Hosts will say they feel like they get more than they give.”
