Since its founding in 1877, The Fresh Air Fund has provided children from New York City’s underserved communities with free and engaging summer experiences in the outdoors. The Fund’s very first program was the Friendly Towns volunteer host family program, and the organization has evolved over the past 147 years to include six sleepaway camps and year-round enrichment programs.
The Fresh Air Fund recently completed a strategic plan to set a vision for the future and, as part of that plan, we have reached the difficult decision that it is time to focus our resources on our thriving camp programs and we will no longer be offering the Friendly Towns program moving forward.
Through the strategic plan, we renewed our commitment to helping youth develop a positive relationship with nature and learn new skills that will serve them into adulthood. We reviewed program interest and participation rates for all our programs and spoke with New York City families, community partners, volunteers, host families and many others. A core vision of our strategic plan is to serve as many youth from NYC as possible, and to achieve that we need to devote our resources to support the growth we are seeing in our camping programs and to strengthen initiatives to serve children and families year-round.
We are deeply grateful for the dedication of so many people to the Friendly Towns program throughout our organization’s history, including volunteers, host families, children who participated and their families, and our committed staff.
We are so proud of the life-changing impact the Friendly Towns program has had on so many of the youth and families who have participated. As we approach our 150th anniversary, we look forward to celebrating our founding program and recognizing the remarkable community of people who have participated and made it possible.
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