BrainstormNW, April 2008
By Lisa Baker
THIRD WORLD POVERTY IS AN OVERWHELMING THING.
Those who have seen it with their own eyes return home chastened by the experience but can think of no earthly way to make a dent in the misery.
After all, what can one person, one family, one couple do by themselves against such a monstrous enemy?
BrainstormNW, April 2008
The obvious answer is to write a check. Maybe it’s not a Bill Gates-sized check, but giving something – anything at all – seems right.
Even so, while gifts of money salve our conscience, they seem to disappear, without having the substantive impact envisioned.
Folks grow weary of feeling ineffectual, reasoning that a check, even many checks, will never replace what is truly lacking: a viable economic system that allows people to advance themselves. A marketplace.
In time, many givers shrug it off and get on with their lives.
Cindy and Clay Cooper are non-shruggers.
Not content to take the checkbook route, Cindy Cooper and her husband have decided to give the real thing: the gift of capitalism.
Yes, it’s the fish story again – the gift of a fish versus the gift of a fishing lesson that results in a lifetime of support – but with a 2008 twist: Give someone a fish and they eat for a day, give someone access to a virtual global marketplace of fish buyers and they eat for a lifetime.
The Coopers’ Speak shop, a nearly 2-year-old venture based in Portland, is a picture of perfect timing, marrying the growing need in a global marketplace to speak other languages with Internet technology that allows a virtual immersion experience.
Speak Shop’s one-on-one Spanish lessons are taught from Guatemala via live videoconference to Americans who have found their professions – especially in legal and medical circles – increasingly international.
The coopers provide the technology platform and act as the bridge between a growing crowd of students and their Guatemalan tutors. For this serviced, the Coopers receive a $9.95 membership fee from each student and then pass on full lesson fees to the tutors themselves, who for the first time, have clients year-round and businesses they can run and manage themselves.
Fascinating Oregonians - Cindy Cooper
It all began when Clay Cooper, a web tech guru who never traveled went on a trip to Guatemala to follow his career goal to “do something international.” He met up with a college-educated Spanish tutor living a surprisingly impoverished life.
It occurred to him that a man with such a bilingual skills lacked only one thing: a market in which to offer his commodity. The wheels began turning.
Cindy completed the vision, supplying her international experience growing up in Brazil and her unwavering belief in capitalism as a tool to bring about social good.
The result: A marriage, a business and a third-world venture incubator all in one.
Cindy, who says her time in corporate marketing for Nike gave her practical ideas for businesses to aid in developing countries, believes the power of business for social good “is still largely untapped.”
To date, Speak Shop has taught some 5,000 lessons online and seeks soon to recruit tutors in other countries and offer other languages.
The effect on tutor families has been nearly instantaneous, she says. Instead of struggling for necessities, Speak Shop tutors are able to stow away cash for their children’s education and to complete their own.
Even more, Cindy says, the tutors have become entrepreneurs rather than just survivors. “They’ve started developing marketing and business skills. Over time, something has shifted in how they think of their role,” she says. “Now that they’re out of survival mode, they think, ‘What else can I dream about?’”
