Social Alliance for a Vibrant Economy l A vibrant economy is all inclusive.

A Door Prize Fishing Trip

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Last summer, the door prize for attending the SAVE fundraiser, “The Key to a Vibrant Economy” was a fishing excursion with our board member Bill Knutzen. This last weekend, the winners, Bill and Carol Henshaw and their son Brian, daughter-in-law Susan and grandson John joined Bill to fish for ling cod and shrimp from Bill’s boat. Here’s how their day went:

We left Birch Bay marina about 9:30 and headed to the North Side of Sucia Island and fished for Ling Cod for about an hour and ½. Susan caught 2 big sharks (Dogfish), she is quite the fisher-woman and was very excited when she caught the shark. Grandson John had a couple of fish on his line. We think one took his bait back into its den and he lost it then. We then went over to Fossil Bay, docked and ate some lunch. We had a big tide exchange, so we headed over to Waldron Island hoping to catch the slack tide and put out shrimp pots. When we reached Waldron, the tide had slowed down enough, and we put out pots. We had some snacks, talked, hooked up the pot puller and went over and picked up the first pot as it was caught by the tide and was moving, no shrimp in that one. Picked up the next pot and halfway up we blew a fuse, so we had to pull 200 plus feet of line by hand. I was glad Brian was there to help. The trip up allowed most of the shrimp to escape, we only got about 10 in that pot but got a very good aerobic workout. I replaced the pot puller fuse and pulled the last pots and we headed home as Bill Henshaw had a meeting and had to be back at dock by 4. They got about 160 shrimp (spot prawns), and as you can see from our pictures of Bill, the shrimp can move. We had a great day in the San Juan Islands. ~ Bill Knutzen

SAVE thanks Bill and Carol Henshaw for their support of our efforts to bring economic education to Whatcom County.

Kids Biz Club Course Gets Alderwood Students Seal of Approval

Kids Biz Club is an 8-week 16 session course created by SAVENW.org to help local Fifth Graders learn how to start their own business. Topics include creating a business budget, a business plan and a business website.

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This Spring, we had the opportunity to provide this course to students in an After-School Program at Alderwood Elementary School in Bellingham, WA. Each student was provided with a laptop to use during the course, a USB drive to save their work and a course notebook. Then their work began. The first lessons were about business planning concepts: How to choose a business, how to estimate costs, how to set pricing, the difference between a service, a product or a knowledge-based business.

Then we took a day to learn from local business manager, John “Westy” Westerfield, of Yeager’s Sporting Goods. The class explored coming to a net profit, and the differences between owners, managers, and employees. We wish to thank Westy for sharing his knowledge with the class and will be sure to say “Hi,” next time we are in his store.

With a business plan forming we moved on to the technical aspects of website design, beginning with the basics of file management.

While the course has very challenging goals, every student was able to finish their own business website – created from scratch using HTML and CSS. Each student customized their website with unique images, font colors and background colors.