BY JOSEFINA LOZA

Once a week Steve Milhollin meets his Spanish tutor, even though they’re thousands of miles apart.

He lives in Carter Lake, Iowa. The tutor, Claritza Morales, is in Antigua, Guatemala.

They connect online through Speak Shop, a California-based [sic, Oregon-based] firm that offers tutoring to students worldwide and employs teachers in impoverished countries.

Milhollin liked the idea of connecting with a native speaker online. But little did he know that his Spanish lessons would blossom into something more – a friendship.

Milhollin signed up with the language site last summer. There, he schedules class times, pays for lessons and virtually “meets” his tutor, Morales.

They talk through headsets and review Spanish exercises she e-mails to him. They also use online translators to look up new words.

Morales, a chatty woman in her mid-40s, doesn’t speak much English. So the translator comes in handy.

She’s married with five kids. Milhollin has met them all – online, of course. He’s a 62-year-old retired computer programmer who wears wire-rim glasses and has a 1970s Burt Reynolds mustache.

“We’ve become really great friends,” he said.

He speaks Spanish quite well. He reads at a fourth-grade level, mostly “Judy Moody” children’s books in Spanish.

Morales has helped him with the language. And with a lot more.

When Milhollin fell gravely ill, Morales was there. He lost hair and weight and he got weak. Morales stayed with him online.

As he got better, their lessons progressed. They met more frequently.

“I get a real buzz from Spanish,” Milhollin said. “It’s like classical music. I get chills down my spine whenever I hear it.”

The tutor’s support touched Milhollin. So he started digging a little more into her personal life.

He learned Antigua is home to dozens of Spanish schools that offer immersion language programs. Competition is stiff among tutors, like Morales, who offer cheap private lessons at the schools in the summer to students from the United States, Europe, Japan and Korea.

But in the offseason, many tutors have no work.

So companies such as Speak Shop have sprung up in recent years, offering online language classes through videoconferencing.

Tutors set their own price, between $7 and $10 per hour. Speak Shop founder Clay Cooper said the company doesn’t take any of their earnings, instead charging students an initial fee. However, tutors who use the local Spanish school’s computers to give online classes pay a small fee for the space.

Morales didn’t have a home computer. She would drive – or sometimes walk – an hour or so to a nearby school to log online to conduct her lessons.

“I felt bad,” Milhollin said. “Instead of spending time with her family, she was tutoring me. I wanted to help.”

So he bought her a computer.

“It was a wonderful gesture,” Cooper said. “I was really impressed with his generosity. He wanted to make sure Claritza could tutor more students but also have time with her children.”

Indeed she does. Morales works from her home and makes twice as much tutoring.

As things turned out, Milhollin was her lifesaver.

• Contact the writer: 444-1075, j.loza@owh.com

By Amy Hsuan, Oregonian

December 30, 2008, 1:46PM

The company: Speakshop.com, Northeast Portland

The product: A Web site that connects foreign-language students with Spanish tutors in Guatemala and Nicaragua via webcam.

Created: August 2004

Suggested retail price: Tutors charge $7 to $10 an hour. Speakshop.com collects a membership fee from users ranging from $9.99 to $39.99 a month, depending on the number of lessons received.m
What stage: Up and running

Employees: Two in Portland, with 10 contracted tutors worldwide

Where they work: Out of their homes

The founders: Clay Cooper, 41, and wife Cindy Cooper, 35, met while studying for their master’s degrees in international management at the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona. Clay, a Montana native, worked in the financial services industry for 15 years. Cindy, a graduate of Beaverton High School, worked in marketing and corporate social responsibility.

The idea source: In 1998, Clay traveled to Antigua, Guatemala, hoping to immerse himself in Spanish as part of his master’s program. There, he hired and befriended several tutors. “It was the first time where I knew someone who was well-educated and worked hard and was still struggling economically,” Cooper said. “I felt like I had to do something.” When Cooper returned to the U.S., he hatched a plan to start a business that would benefit people in poverty while also providing a useful service.

Speakshop.com aims to help tutors build their own businesses by allowing them to set their own rates and earn higher wages than they would in their home countries. Tutors hold lessons through Web conferencing with students, who schedule appointments online. Last year, Speakshop.com tutors taught 3,700 lessons, some of them working more than 100 hours in a month.

The money: The Coopers launched Speakshop.com using their personal savings, spending what they had when they needed to develop different aspects of the business. Now, they’d like to build the business more quickly, hoping to spend money on marketing and advertising. ” “We are open to investors, but it would take someone who understands that part of the return is you’re helping people work their way out of poverty,” Clay Cooper said.

The dream: Think the eBay of language learning. Within five years, the Coopers hope to have 1,000 online tutors. This year, close to 6,000 lessons will be conducted through Speakshop.com. Cooper would like to see people rethink language-learning as something that doesn’t necessarily have to be done through audiotapes or a community college. “The technology we have now is much better than it used to be,” Cooper said.

The fear: “I don’t think we’re growing fast enough,” Cooper said. “There are a number of tutors out there, and we should help them find more students.”

The forecast: The Coopers are profitable now, but as Clay said, “It’s only profitable if you don’t pay yourself.” In five years, he hopes to have annual revenues of $1 million.

The Samaritan Counseling Center, whose mission is to promote psychological health and wholeness, is convinced that a society that honors integrity and ethical behavior will foster healthy individuals, families, and communities.

For-profit businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and individuals that demonstrate business excellence and the highest standards of ethical conduct, integrity and civic and social responsibility may be the recipients of the 2007 Oregon Ethics in Business Awards.

Finalists include:
Businesses
•Boly:Welch Recruiting
•First Tech Credit Union
•gDiapers – Recipient
•Duckwall-Pooley Fruit – Recipient
•Healthnotes
•Legend Homes
•Les Schwab
•Gerding Edlen Development – Recipient
•LightSpeed Aviation
•Oregon Vineyard Supply
•Speak Shop
•Starker Forest
•Thyme Garden Herb Seed Company

Not-For-Profit Organizations
•Dove Lewis
•Hands on Greater Portland
•Friends of the Children – Recipient
•Medical Teams International

Individuals
•Al Jubitz
•Peggy Fowler – Recipient
•Mario Pastega
•John Bates

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?’”

By Christina Lent

The Beaverton Valley Times, Nov 29, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Clay and Cindy Cooper are pioneers in creating a new online language teaching industry.

It’s been two years since the Beaverton couple launched Speak Shop, a unique online company that offers fair trade Spanish lessons via Web camera with professional tutors in Latin America.

Their mission is two-fold: provide language teachers in developing countries with a way to launch their own mini tutoring businesses while offering people of all ages around the world with convenient, affordable access to personalized language lessons by videoconferencing with native speakers in another country.

Jaime Valdez / The Times Speak Shop co-founders Clay and Cindy Cooper videoconference with Aracely Rogel, one of the Beaverton company’s professional Spanish tutors in Guatemala.

“A big part of our mission is connecting people,” said Cindy Cooper, a 1991 Beaverton High School graduate. “Speak Shop offers a wonderful cross-cultural opportunity for both our tutors and students.

“We give people a meaningful way to learn a language while also learning about another country, its culture, social systems, its people and way of life. That’s really significant.”

Shared vision

Clay and Cindy met while attending Thunderbird Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Ariz.

“That was also the place where Clay got the idea for Speak Shop,” Cindy said.

As a requirement for graduation, Clay had to learn to speak a foreign language.

“I had struggled to learn Spanish in high school,” he recalled. “I was timid about speaking in class.”

Knowing a traditional classroom setting would not work for him, Clay traveled to Guatemala for the summer in 1998 to work with a tutor.

“My tutor Pablo invited me to his home, and it was then that I realized he was living in impoverished conditions,” Clay said. “Here was a man who went to university, was very bright, worked hard and was doing all the right things, yet he was struggling day in and out.

“When I realized he was getting paid the equivalent of $1 to $2 an hour, it just didn’t seem fair.”

Like other educated people struggling in perpetual poverty due to barriers beyond their control, no matter how hard Pablo worked, circumstances made it impossible to rise above poverty, Cindy added.

“It’s a pervasive problem – people who are working hard and are good at their jobs do not have the opportunity to get ahead,” she said.

Knowing that there was a demand in the United States for qualified Spanish instructors willing to offer private lessons, Clay decided to use his Web site development background to create an online channel for tutors in one country to videoconference with a student in another country.

Although Cindy initially wondered if the market would support the videoconferencing instruction model, she embraced the idea of starting a business that would help empower others.

“With Speak Shop, the teachers can run their own mini tutoring business, and we help them by offering business training and marketing support,” Cindy said.

“By working with us, tutors are making three to four times more per hour than they usually get, plus they are able to teach year round,” Clay added.

Meanwhile, Speak Shop offers students an avenue to gain access to professional, private tutors, who can tailor their instruction.

All it takes is a computer, high-speed Internet access, a headset with microphone and an optional Web cam.

Creating a bond

With a click of the mouse, Cindy easily connected with one of Speak Shop’s seven Spanish teachers in Antigua, Guatemala.

Arecely Rogel’s smile lit up the computer screen as she began talking about her two years with the company.

“I love being able to share my language with my students,” Rogel said. “I do it with a lot of love and attention.”

This month she is working with 15 students. They live in Norway, England, Germany and the United States.

“Working with Speak Shop has changed me intellectually and economically,” Rogel said. “I’ve learned a lot about different cultures and languages.

“I was afraid to touch computers before, now I have confidence. Economically, I can help supplement my husband’s income and contribute to our family and to my children.”

Her lessons depend on the level of her students, she said. They can range from mini dialogues and easy phrases to grammar and more complex phrases to working on Spanish fluency.

With her advanced students, she holds discussions on an array of topics including politics, medicine and religion.

“It depends on the level and the desire of the student,” Rogel said. “The class is very fun, but also highly professional.”

Realizing a dream

Speak Shop tutors log about 100 hours of online instruction a month.

“When the tutors went to 60 hours a month, at that point, I realized the business was sustainable,” Clay said. “I realized people would pay for our service, stick with it and provide the tutors with a sustainable income.”

Knowing they are making a difference in other’s lives is very rewarding to the Coopers.

“Speak Shop has been like our child,” Cindy said. “We’ve come a long way from the dreams we wrote on paper.

“They are actually a reality, and now we are at the point where we can expand to other countries and teach additional languages.”

For more information about Speak Shop, visit www.SpeakShop.com.

Speak Shop offers fair trade Spanish lessons via webcam with tutors in Latin America.