Have you ever been inside too long, stepped out the door, and taken a huge, deep breath of the fresh mountain air that surrounds you everyday?

Well, the children of New York City who participate in The Fresh Air Fund each year aim to do just that this summer while also gaining experiences and memories to last a lifetime.

Since 1877, The Fresh Air Fund has given more than 1.8 million children from low-income communities in NYC the opportunity to stay with volunteer host families along the East Coast and Southern Canada for one adventurous and fun-filled week, sometimes longer. The Fresh Air Fund also has overnight camps that are located in Fishkill as well as year-round leadership and educational programs to participate in when they aren't traveling to the countryside.

“It's really a great program,” said co-chair of The Fresh Air Fund, Lisa Weiss. “It gives NYC kids a break for a week and a chance to go camping, fishing, horseback riding, hiking or even just sitting at home with the host family learning to cook, read, play scrabble and just laugh.”

And you don't have to have kids of your own in order to host a child. According to Weiss, you can even opt to host two children at the same time, that way if you don't have children and you'd like to host, the kids will have a buddy to do activities with, with the possibility of enhancing their experience.

“My husband and I don't have kids but we've hosted a young girl named Paige for a couple of years and we love it. She has really pulled us out socially,” explained Weiss, “so really with this program you're not just helping the child, it goes both ways. It's just as rewarding for you as it is for them.

We do more things outdoors and around the community because she is here with us, and in turn she gets to experience country living,” she continued. “She has little sisters at home and is often mom's helper for things, so being in our house with us is her time to just be on her own and enjoy other things.”

One host family, the Evans', are new to The Fresh Air Fund and will be hosting a child for one week this summer at their home in Wurtsboro, but they certainly aren't new to hosting exchange students.

“This will be the youngest child we've ever hosted,” smiled mom Elizabeth Evans. “We started hosting six years ago for international exchange students. We first hosted a 16-year-old girl from Spain. It went well, although the age difference was a bit big as Simone was 10 at the time and Danae was six. Three years later we hosted a 12-year-old from Japan. She was closer in age to our girls and it went great. We're actually still in contact with her, and her parents have become lifelong friends of ours,” she added. “I think it's important to have an international point of view in the house because many kids don't necessarily get to experience someone who is so culturally different from themselves. We all learn from each other.”

According to her husband Matt Evans, they were interested in hosting exchange students for quite some time, so they began to look around for different agencies and places that had programs set up to host international students. They ended up finding a program that Frost Valley was offering years ago, as well as 4-H and most recently AFS, which stands for American Field Service, an international youth exchange organization.

“Most recently we hosted a 15-year-old exchange student from Germany through AFS,” said Matt, “and she was here with us for two months.”

But this year will be a bit different for the Evans, as they welcome a young girl from NYC to be a part of their family for a week. Daughters Simone and Danae are excited to take her to do things that they enjoy doing, like hiking to Sam's Point, being outside, showing her the animals that live in the area and of course their own cat, dog and hedgehog.

“I'm hoping that on some level, we end up having a nurturing relationship with her that can last for a long time,” expressed Elizabeth. “If everything works out we would love to have her continue to stay with us in the years to come.

I think that's why essentially we were so interested in The Fresh Air Fund. It's because the proximity is such that this could become a yearly thing for all of us.”

“And I think that having a diversity of experiences and backgrounds coming in and out of your home is beneficial for everyone. It's beneficial for the child you're hosting, it's beneficial for your family,” stated Matt. “It's just a really great way to expand horizons and expand understandings and appreciation of other people, regardless of where they're from, like Japan or Brooklyn.”

The application and interview process went fairly quickly for the Evans family. From the time their application was submitted to the initial meeting and home check with Weiss and co-chair Vikki Siciliano, to the final welcome as a new host family for The Fresh Air Fund, a little more than three weeks had passed.

In your application, you can choose whether you'd like to choose a boy or a girl as well as a general age range. As with any type of hosting, there is always the concern that perhaps it won't work out, or the child will get homesick, or what to do in an emergency. In any of those cases both Weiss and Siciliano are available around the clock to help you, as well as other volunteer staff that make the program what it is.

So if you'd like to become a volunteer host family or want to know more about The Fresh Air Fund, you can go online at www.freshair.org