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Barter At Camp
Charyl and Bob Hanson are the owners and directors of Camp Farwell for Girls in Vermont (www.farwell.com). Camp Farwell has been a very special place for girls for over 100 years with campers coming from all over the country and world to spend part or all of their summers in a beautiful 100+ acre setting on Halls Lake in Newbury, VT. Founded in 1906, Farwell is the oldest girls camp in the country.
Charyl and Bob soon learned about barter in their early years at Farwell when the father of one of their campers discussed the advantages of barter and suggested they contact Bartermax down in the Boston area. And that was the beginning of a very long and beneficial relationship with Bartermax, and now with IMS who recently took over Bartermax.
Bob states that "one of the real benefits of barter for us has been the opportunity to get to know so many wonderful families who have sent their daughters to Farwell over the years. We have had many great campers through barter, and one of the first was the daughter of Deb Cartier, who is still our broker with IMS. Deb not only knows our camp really well, but knows how we like to use our barter dollars, and will notify us when something comes along that she thinks we might be interested in.
"We have been able to use our barter dollars in many different ways for our Camp. We just created a new four-color 16 page brochure and were able to have it completely printed by Touchmark, a printing company in the Boston area that is a member of IMS (our new brochure is on the home page of our website). I have to do a lot of traveling during the winter months on camper and staff recruiting trips, and have been able to stay at very nice hotels that might have been out of my price range if I was paying cash. During the summer we take our older campers on a 3 day trip to Maine to go white water rafting, and we consider ourselves fortunate to be able to pay for that trip with barter dollars.
"And we have also been able to use our barter dollars for our own personal enjoyment too. There have been many all-inclusive vacations to various islands in the Caribbean that have helped to break up our long Vermont winters for us. Our summers can be intense and stressful, and in recent years we rented a beautiful home for two weeks on Cape Cod that was located right at water's edge - the most amazing and relaxing vacation imaginable.
"We could not be more pleased to be a part of IMS. We have had the opportunity to work with some really wonderful people like our broker, Deb Cartier; our business as well as the campers themselves have certainly benefited from our association with IMS; and our family and personal life has been enriched by the many travel opportunities that we have been able to take advantage of".