OUR
MISSION:
Create 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.
PRESS & AWARDS:
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
Clay Cooper (Cindy's husband) – Co-Founder and CEOUntil the age of 31, Clay struggled
to learn Spanish through traditional classroom
techniques. Clay finally succeeded when he completed
an immersion program in Guatemala. That experience
inspired Speak Shop. As an executive at the world’s
leading online financial services firm, Charles
Schwab & Co., Inc., Clay conceived of, created
and led dozens of technology and web-related initiatives.
Clay has also consulted on technology and strategic
development to several early-stage ventures. An
early-adopter of distance-learning courses, Clay
has studied and taught online courses. Clay graduated
with honors from Thunderbird School of Global Management with a Masters of
International Management (global MBA) and graduated
from Montana State University with a major in
Finance.
Cindy Cooper (Clay’s wife) – Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer
The poverty Cindy witnessed growing up in Brazil fueled her drive to
make the world a better place. As Co-Founder and CMO of Speak Shop, the first
company to offer fair trade, live online Spanish tutoring, Cindy has
taken a social venture from concept to market. Prior to Speak Shop,
Cindy spearheaded marketing, strategy and program development for social
sector organizations such as the Social Entrepreneurship Incubator (now
Social Fusion) and Net Impact, the world’s largest association of MBAs and
professionals committed to using the power of business to create a better world.
At Net Impact, she created and marketed new programs that helped triple
membership within two years, forged alliances with the United Nations,
Skoll Foundation and the World Bank and gave presentations on social
entrepreneurship and corporate social responsibility. Cindy also draws from
a corporate marketing background at Nike and The Capital Group.
A Brazilian American, Cindy has worked as a tutor in Spanish and translator
in Portuguese. She holds a Master of International Management with
distinguished honors from Thunderbird and graduated summa cum laude and
Phi Beta Kappa from Claremont McKenna College with a B.A. in Psychology
and Spanish.
