Celeste Ochoa remembers being scared the first time she left her city home in Brooklyn to spend a week in a small, rural town.
Yet Ochoa’s time as a Fresh Air Fund kid, which included many summers coming to Amherst, proved to be such a wonderful experience for her that she returned this week to visit her local family, for the first time since the pandemic.
“Definitely a chance for different opportunities, creating your own individualism and baby steps of creating your own life,” Ochoa said of her time in the program, as she sat poolside at an Amherst home on a hot and humid afternoon on Aug. 7.
Attending the pool party for Fresh Air families and their guests hosted by her Fresh Air Fund mother Jeanne Esposito, Ochoa, 20, is just weeks from beginning basic training for the U.S. Army, where she will be a water treatment specialist.
Reflecting on the time she spent in Amherst while in Fresh Air, including volunteering at a blood drive and a local farm, camping in a tent, and going on a hike through an old-growth forest, Ochoa says it was always a nice change of scenery from the city.
“We’re surrounded by nature here — you don’t have a choice,” Ochoa said, calling Esposito’s home her vacation apartment.
For Esposito, whose family has hosted Fresh Air children for more than 20 years, Ochoa’s situation illustrates how participants benefit from the program, which is in the process of being restored after disruptions caused by COVID-19.
“It’s just love,” Esposito said. “That pretty much defines the program.”
Each summer, children visit volunteer host families in rural, suburban and small-town communities along the East Coast. Young people also can participate in year-round leadership, career exploration and educational programs.
Esposito said she has great respect for the way the Fresh Air Fund handles its mission. Founded in 1877, the not-for-profit youth development organization has provided free, life-changing summer experiences in the outdoors to more than 1.8 million children from New York City’s underserved communities. Children who participate live in the five boroughs, are ages 7-18, with most new guests 8 or 9, and are eligible for free or reduced lunch under USDA income guidelines.
Esposito learned about the program when teaching in New York City, making a promise to herself that when she had a career and a home with a backyard, she would welcome Fresh Air children.
Over the 22 years she has been a host family, Esposito has worked with fellow Amherst representative Susan Morrello to create a Friendly Towns program, recruiting families from the Vermont border to the Connecticut state line as representatives for the Pioneer Valley.
The process for getting more host families for next year, including interviewing them and having them fill out questionnaires, is beginning.
Like many programs starting up again after being shut down by COVID, Fresh Air is operating on a greatly reduced basis. While 50 to 60 children were coming from the city to the area each summer for one- or two-week stays before the pandemic, just four children are in the region this summer, following two summers when the program was on hiatus.
This year, stipulations were put in place that children had to stay with families within a three-hour range, and had to have a previous relationship with those families.
While her first role is hosting, Esposito also gets out information through advertisements and recruits families, and makes sure that when the bus arrives from New York, support is available to children and families. Fresh Air pays for all start-up costs, security checks, home visits, and the bus ride, and each child is also insured.
Nicole Johsnon, director of the Friendly Towns program for the Fresh Air Fund, said in a statement that the Pioneer Valley has been a wonderful place for city youth to travel. “We look forward to working with our dedicated volunteers and host families in the area to build the program again in the future,” Johnston said.
Esposito said the children she has hosted over the years can be “hilariously funny,” as they see life differently when she takes them to a farmers market or another place they can’t experience in the city.
In addition, she appreciates that Fresh Air Fund is a celebration of courage, noting that often she will make trips to the ocean, where kids can experience waves for the first time, and she said she has taught so many children to swim over the years.
She is confident others will be ready to be part of the program.
“Little by little we’ll build back,” Esposito said.