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
e-mail protected from spam bots
267-295-2862
www.speakshop.com
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/4/prweb223067.htm