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Wanted to share this, re: The Fresh Air Fund


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Please take a moment and take a look. Let me know what you think. I plan to email the link to my area rep and see if she wants to share it with the people at The Fresh Air Fund.

 

And share the link if you can with people you know. Even if you can't host, you can help spread the word, and maybe that will accomplish getting some new hosts, which are always needed. :)

 

Thanks!

 

http://nancextoo.livejournal.com/203635.html

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Wonderful post (love the pics!) ~ I've seen you write about the Fresh Air Fund before and I looked them up…unfortunately we don't live in an area that does this (I wonder why they only use a specific range?). It seems like a great program though! :D

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Wonderful post (love the pics!) ~ I've seen you write about the Fresh Air Fund before and I looked them up…unfortunately we don't live in an area that does this (I wonder why they only use a specific range?). It seems like a great program though! :D

 

Thank you for looking at my post :)

 

They use a specific range because the kids are transported via bus and I guess they want to keep them within a certain, reasonable driving distance of home.

 

I'm not sure if other areas have similar types of programs (this particular one is ONLY for kids who live in New York City).

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Thank you for looking at my post :)

 

They use a specific range because the kids are transported via bus and I guess they want to keep them within a certain, reasonable driving distance of home.

 

I'm not sure if other areas have similar types of programs (this particular one is ONLY for kids who live in New York City).

 

Could you ask your contact at Fresh Air Fund if they know of similar organizations in other parts of the country?

 

Great entry, BTW.

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Thank you for looking at my post :)

 

They use a specific range because the kids are transported via bus and I guess they want to keep them within a certain, reasonable driving distance of home.

 

I'm not sure if other areas have similar types of programs (this particular one is ONLY for kids who live in New York City).

 

Ah yes, the bus thing makes sense. Shame they can't fly them - that would allow a greater distance and therefore more families to take part… but I guess even with the dirt cheap flights you can often get now, there'd still be a lot of complications with flight changeovers, delays, supervision, security, yada yada yada. Wonderful that they can do what they CAN do though! :D

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Could you ask your contact at Fresh Air Fund if they know of similar organizations in other parts of the country?

 

Great entry, BTW.

 

Thank you for looking. :) I just emailed my contact and asked her if she knew of any similar programs in other parts of the country. I will update when I hear back from her.

 

Ah yes, the bus thing makes sense. Shame they can't fly them - that would allow a greater distance and therefore more families to take part… but I guess even with the dirt cheap flights you can often get now, there'd still be a lot of complications with flight changeovers, delays, supervision, security, yada yada yada. Wonderful that they can do what they CAN do though! :D

 

Yeah... it would be nice to be able to have more options, but it would definitely be more expensive to start bringing airfare into the equation, and they wouldn't be able to be as easily supervised as they are on a chaperoned bus, and all the other things you mentioned, too! I'll let you guys know if I find out about similar programs in other areas, though. :)

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Glad you posted this. We'd talked about it and decided we wanted to host. I've been meaning to fill out the application for awhile now and just never getting to it. So your post got me there!

 

Hopefully it will all work out! We only live about 10 minutes outside of Queens, so while it's not exactly that far away, some kids may appreciate a MUCH shorter trip! LOL!

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Glad you posted this. We'd talked about it and decided we wanted to host. I've been meaning to fill out the application for awhile now and just never getting to it. So your post got me there!

 

Hopefully it will all work out! We only live about 10 minutes outside of Queens, so while it's not exactly that far away, some kids may appreciate a MUCH shorter trip! LOL!

 

Awesome! Glad you are proceeding with it- and yep I am sure they will appreciate the shorter trip lol. And some may be glad to know that home isn't too far away at all if they tend to feel homesick. I am sure you will have fun with him/her! :)

 

That is a wonderful entry!

 

Thank you for looking at it and your comment. :)

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Could you ask your contact at Fresh Air Fund if they know of similar organizations in other parts of the country?

 

Great entry, BTW.

 

Hi, I heard back from my representative and she said:

 

"I'm not aware of any other program that is like the Fresh Air Fund program. There are many camps that offer trips for disadvantaged kids all over the US (Salvation Army camp, etc.) and they need volunteers but I haven't ever heard of one that uses the host family structure. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist anywhere, though. I googled "host family" to see if anything popped up, but all were programs to host international exchange students or foreign visitors through Lions or Rotary. If I become aware of anything, I'll let you know."

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Nance,

I think the fresh air fund service that you are doing is wonderful.

 

I kind of don't like the blog post though. Did her mom give permission to use those photos in that way? I think I would be embarrassed beyond belief knowing someone did a story about my poor little deprived city child and posted pictures identifying her/him.

 

I don't know. Maybe I'm overly sensitive.

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Nance,

I think the fresh air fund service that you are doing is wonderful.

 

I kind of don't like the blog post though. Did her mom give permission to use those photos in that way? I think I would be embarrassed beyond belief knowing someone did a story about my poor little deprived city child and posted pictures identifying her/him.

 

I don't know. Maybe I'm overly sensitive.

 

Gee, I would hate for it to come across that way and I hope that to most people, it doesn't.

 

I'm not sure if you realized, it isn't just one child pictured- it's two different children (and after this summer, it will be four different children). And the post is not about what the circumstances of any particular child, it's about the program in general. I only say a few lines about each child and what they enjoyed while they were here, nothing about "here's the story of this particular poor, deprived child" or anything like that.

 

The pictures are to show what a positive experience it was overall in the hopes of encouraging others to give it a shot. And while I did post pictures and first names, I, of course, didn't use last names, or where they are from or anything like that. Host families and volunteers do also submit photos to the Fresh Air Fund for possible use on their site and so on, too, and sometimes they have news people show up at the bus areas and so on, so I'm assuming they covered the publicity permission portion of things, although, again, I didn't use last names or anything to at least somewhat protect their privacy.

 

I do kind of know what you mean, I don't want to sound like I'm being defensive, either. I certainly don't want to offend or embarrass anyone, I just wanted to see if I could help get some more people interested in a great program.

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