Guest blog: Fresh Air Fund offers city kids new experiences, connections every summer

By Alexis De La Rosa, an alum of The Fresh Air Fund in New York City. Alexis is a senior at Middlebury College in Vermont, and in Fall 2018, he studied abroad at Oxford. Alexis spent his summers with a Fresh Air Fund volunteer host family in Connecticut from the age of 7. Diversity, challenges, laughter, and smiles have created a bond between his New York City family and his Connecticut family and that is an “unbreakable bond.”

“Marco!” Teri screamed.

“Polo!” we responded. Jack and Anna swam off; I couldn’t. The minute I let my guard down, Teri tagged me. Right then, I was thrilled that a silly game of Marco Polo was my biggest problem.

At seven years old, I was participating in The Fresh Air Fund for the first time. I visited the Reed Family, who were volunteers in the program in Connecticut. Today, 14 years later, we still have an unbreakable bond.

The Fresh Air Fund gave me the opportunity to learn new skills and expand my awareness of the world and its possibilities, but it wasn’t always easy. Going away to a volunteer host family requires a lot of bravery—the city children who participate in this program leave their homes and travel to a town that in some ways feels like a foreign country. I grew up in Washington Heights in New York City, with a big Dominican family. Let me tell you: New Canaan, Connecticut is not the Heights. The people talk differently, dress differently, celebrate differently, and it can be a real challenge to get adjusted.

It can also be tough for the families who volunteer. Sometimes it’s hard to get the children to open up. I remember my first summer when they wanted me to try an array of different dishes, but I said no to everything. I only wanted hot dogs and mangos. They didn’t have any magic formula to make me feel more at ease, but what they did have was time, patience, and love.

Over the years, I learned many new things including how to maintain a conversation, use table manners, and bake bread, but above all, I learned the importance of my voice and its power. I not only became more comfortable interacting with people who were different from me, but I became more whole. I began to develop my own unique personality.

Without having some of those awkward, uncomfortable experiences with the Reeds, I don’t think I would have been equipped to deal with some of life’s challenges that inevitably followed. And while it was fun to participate in activities such as swimming and playing tennis, what resonates with me the most are the skills I learned in the process of navigating a world that was so different from my own like picking up on subtle social cues.

I have to thank my host dad Fran because, up until this very day, he has played an influential role in my life. My biological father has not always been present. And in his absence, my host dad taught me the values of life: love, family, and friends.

I want to be clear: I am proud of being from Washington Heights. I’m not saying that suburban Connecticut is better than where I grew up. There are differences, however, and being exposed to these differences has allowed me to navigate the tricky spaces between my two worlds.

The skills I gained through my Fresh Air Fund experience have been paramount in my journey of obtaining a full ride to Middlebury College, maintaining a 3.5 GPA, getting an opportunity to attend Oxford's study abroad program, and traveling to France and Ghana on full scholarships.

It’s great that Fresh Air gives kids a chance to participate in fun activities, but it also offers so much more. It challenges the city children and the volunteer families in ways that are like no other, making them enter into new worlds full of possibilities and growth. This is how The Fresh Air Fund changes so many lives.

I love my volunteer host family tremendously, and I know they love me. Without The Fresh Air Fund, we would have never had the opportunity to form our unbreakable bond and bridge our two very different worlds together.

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Background: The Fresh Air Fund

The Fresh Air Fund, an independent, not-for-profit agency, has provided free summer experiences to more than 1.8 million New York City children from low-income communities since 1877. Each summer, thousands of children visit volunteer host families along the East Coast and Southern Canada or enjoy The Fund’s five overnight camps in Fishkill, New York. Fresh Air children also participate in year-round leadership and educational programs. For more information or to find out how to apply, visit www.freshair.org.