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Speak Shop and PROBIGUA Partner to Offer Face-to-Face Online Spanish Tutoring
Speak Shop puts Guatemalan instructors face-to-face with students all
over the world, and no one has to leave their desk. For the first time,
these tutors can benefit from global e-commerce.
Portland, OR / Antigua, Guatemala (PRWEB) April 5, 2005 --
Speak Shop, an innovative website for live face-to-face Spanish
tutoring, today announced a partnership with PROBIGUA (Proyecto
Bibliotecas Guatemala – Guatemala Library Project), to create an online
marketplace for Guatemalan instructors to teach Spanish to people all
over the world through the Internet.
The partnership saves money for students and opens up new income
opportunities for tutors who, for the first time ever, can sell their
services through e-commerce.
The tutors are experts at customizing Spanish lessons, and
students can learn about Guatemalan cultural issues by actually seeing
and talking with a tutor who lives there. Speak Shop’s online
marketplace provides the infrastructure to facilitate billing,
scheduling, reporting and audio and video interaction. Students choose
tutors based on qualifications and hourly rates and schedule private
lessons, which they take from their personal computer.
PROBIGUA runs one of Guatemala’s best Spanish immersion
schools, using proceeds to fund its country-wide literacy projects.
Until recently, the Spanish school could only operate at capacity
during high tourist season. With the Speak Shop partnership, PROBIGUA
teachers have access to students year-round.
“Probigua will expand their teaching opportunities and earn more money,
resulting in more jobs for teachers and more funds for libraries,” said
Clay Cooper, co-founder of Speak Shop. “Speak Shop’s goal is to create
an eBay of Spanish language instruction where teachers and students
interact directly. This creates a fair trade situation where teachers
manage their own tutoring business, set their own rates and are held to
high quality standards through student feedback ratings. And it makes
it easy for people almost anywhere to learn Spanish online.”
PROBIGUA’s Founder and Director, Rigoberto Zamora Charuc, believes
access to books and the Internet is essential for improving lives in
Guatemala, where poverty and illiteracy are rampant. His own life would
have been much different had he not received an anonymous donation as a
child that allowed him to go to school. As a result, instead of picking
coffee in his remote village, he ended up building 16 rural Internet
centers and 24 libraries throughout Guatemala that are changing the
lives of rural children and their families. Working with Speak Shop,
PROBIGUA takes Internet access a step further and creates economic
opportunity.
“I am convinced that this innovative idea will consequently bring
benefits for individuals and development in many poor Guatemalan
communities,” said Charuc.
About PROBIGUA
PROBIGUA is based in Antigua, Guatemala and was founded by Charuc
who saw reading as the path to freedom for Guatemala’s poor and
isolated children and created 24 libraries and 16 rural Internet
centers in Guatemala. For more information, contact Child Aid,
PROBIGUA’s nonprofit partner in the U.S. www.child-aid.org
About Speak Shop
Speak Shop was founded by Clay and Cindy Cooper to increase access to
foreign language education and to generate economic opportunity for
people in Latin America. For more information on Speak Shop visit
www.speakshop.com.
Media Contact:
Cindy Cooper
267-295-2862
www.speakshop.com
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