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OUR MISSION
OUR MOTTO
OUR STORY
OUR SERVICE
OUR FUTURE
PRESS & AWARDS
NEWSLETTER
OUR TEAM



OUR MISSION:
Opportunity and Community Through Language Instruction…

Speak Shop’s mission is to improve the lives of language tutors and students and to foster intercultural understanding and respect. Speak Shop offers tutors the chance to be entrepreneurial in managing their own tutoring services. Speak Shop provides students with the opportunity to achieve new educational goals, change their careers or prepare for travel abroad. At Speak Shop, students and tutors are active participants in creating a fun, educational and friendly environment.

OUR MOTTO :
Study Spanish at Speak Shop. Build a community with a cause.

OUR STORY :
Not everyone can travel to Guatemala.

A few years ago, at the age of 31, I decided I was finally going to learn to speak Spanish. Having tried and struggled when I was a kid, I thought I couldn't do it.

Then I spent three months in an immersion program in Antigua, Guatemala and became nearly fluent. I studied Spanish a few hours every day, hung out with Guatemalans and lived with people like me who were trying to learn Spanish and supported each other.

In Guatemala, I saw some of the worst poverty I had ever seen, and I realized that even skilled, hard-working people, like Spanish tutors, struggled to earn a decent living. Students were seasonal and when hurricanes hit (like Hurricane Mitch did during my visit) visitors stayed away. The number of tutors often outstripped the demand for lessons, and there was nothing tutors could do to change that.

After I returned, I thought often about what I could do to improve things for the people I’d met in Antigua. I also told my sister about my trip and how I finally found a way to learn Spanish. She was happy for me and wanted to take classes in Guatemala too. But she couldn’t take three months off from work and was scared to travel alone to take Spanish lessons in a foreign country. There wasn’t a flexible, affordable way for most people to learn Spanish the way I had.

The idea of bringing tutors and students together through videoconferencing made sense to me, and I started writing the business plan for Speak Shop. I couldn’t fly more students to Guatemala, but I could take them there through the Internet. I couldn’t make an impoverished area rich, but I could create a web-based marketplace where tutors became entrepreneurs.

Today we have students all over the world. With Speak Shop, they can schedule private classes when they want. They can try several tutors to find one they like and feel comfortable with, just like I did in Guatemala. They can try out immersion-style lessons before deciding to study abroad. And every time they take a class, they are creating hope and better job opportunities in poverty-ridden communities.

I developed Speak Shop for communities like Antigua and people like my sister.

Clay Cooper
Co-Founder & CEO

OUR SERVICE:
What makes us different.

Speak Shop makes it easy for Spanish students all over the world to benefit from one-on-one tutoring with experienced instructors who are native to and living in a Spanish-speaking country. Use Speak Shop to brush up on your Spanish, learn new vocabulary, start from scratch or just to practice your pronunciation. You control what you want to learn, when and from whom.
You and your tutor communicate through video & voice conferencing. You can also use text chat, download materials and an online conjugator and translator. You will be able to work with your tutor to create personalized lesson plans, receive answers to your questions, and receive immediate feedback on grammar, vocabulary and accent. Tutors typically have many years of experience working for top language schools that train tutors using proven methods of teaching foreigners to speak Spanish. Your Speak Shop membership grants you access to all necessary Spanish learning tools online: translator, vocabulary tools, grammar texts, chat rooms, etc. Once you join Speak Shop, you can search for tutors based on their qualifications and prices and schedule a lesson with the tutor of your choice. Speak Shop does not collect any of the tutoring fees in order to maximize the economic benefit to the tutor. Keep in mind that tutors bear costs to teach online, such as Internet fees, which they build into their fee structure. Speak Shop´s services are completely free to Spanish tutors and schools, and Speak Shop also provides technical and business training to tutors free of charge.

If you have already studied Spanish abroad, you may be able to continue studying with the same tutor and school you know and trust. If your tutor is not registered at Speak Shop, let us know. We may be able to help you re-connect.


OUR FUTURE:
Beyond Spanish

Speak Shop is in search of exceptional Spanish tutors to join our network. We carefully screen and train tutors and schools. We hope you will be one of the first people to try this new way of learning Spanish. Speak Shop will eventually offer language instruction for other languages from native speaking tutors in their home countries.

AWARDS:

• Finalist, Investors' Circle, Spring 2009

• Finalist, Oregon Ethics in Business Awards 2008

• Finalist, PBS Project Enterprise Contest 2007

• Fast 50 Readers' Choice, Fast Company 2007

• 2006 Innotech Innovation Award, Innotech Oregon

• Semi-Finalist, 2006 Global Social Venture Competition

• Best Social Return on Investment Analysis, 2005 Social and Environmental Technologies Challenge