Souhail BoussalemWe have BIG news. You can now join any language group on SPEAK for free!
We believe that the best things in life are, and should be, free. Making new friends, watching the sunset, or spending time with your loved ones are all things we can enjoy, and that make us feel free to be ourselves and be loved for who we are. We believe that everyone has the right to feel at home, anywhere. And this is what we want to achieve. We want to allow everyone to feel free and included. We aim to support as many people as possible without leaving anyone behind. From today onwards, all our language groups are free for everyone.
The journey until today
We fight for the social inclusion of migrants and refugees. We contribute to inclusive cities where everyone feels welcomed and diversity is championed. SPEAK’s methodology and the informal atmosphere that characterizes the language groups, allow participants from different backgrounds to learn with each other at the same time that they explore common interests. This way, SPEAK’s community breaks down prejudices and barriers while celebrating new friendships, all of which are essential to the process of integration into a new community. To date, there are 48,000+ SPEAKers, sharing over 57 languages from 200 nationalities, in 24 cities. It is amazing to see the number of people the SPEAK community was able to support and we couldn’t be more proud of its impact.
But it wasn’t enough…
There are many more who could benefit from a solution like ours. A solution that brings people together and breaks the isolation barrier. People who feel excluded, isolated, and that they don’t belong. According to a global survey, 1 in 3 adults experiences feelings of loneliness. At SPEAK, we felt we could do more and reach more people. This has been an internal conversation for a while now. We’ve had many brainstorming sessions as a team to talk about SPEAK’s future and how we could achieve our mission.
We concluded that going free and democratizing access to the SPEAK experience will allow many more to benefit. We are going free so you can feel free. As language groups become free, more people can have access to SPEAK. This creates a bigger impact and will allow us to reach more people. It will also help us leverage the collective goodwill of the SPEAK community. As a SPEAKer, you can now help us scale impact in our mission for the social inclusion of migrants.
How did SPEAK come to this idea?
Before Covid-19, all of SPEAK’s language groups were held offline. During the pandemic, we had to adapt to the circumstances at that time. We decided to have all our language groups take place on an online platform and made the access free for all. As a result, we saw that the number of people who took part in the SPEAK experience skyrocketed. Our impact increased significantly during the pandemic due to increased social isolation and having our solution free for anyone to access.
By going free in 2020, we made it possible for more people to join SPEAK to learn a language and meet others during hard times. Those results were a good indication that going free for good was the way to go. It gives us the ability to fulfill our mission of helping as many people as we can. This is why we removed language group fees to take them out of the equation.
How is it possible for us to offer free language groups?
You may wonder how we’re able to operate without receiving fees for our language groups. Although language groups are free, SPEAKers can still contribute to our mission by contributing any amount they want through our “pay what you want” model. At the end of the application process, participants will be asked if they want to contribute to our mission. No matter how small the amount is, we are happy to receive it. Implementing this model will allow us to keep SPEAK free and accessible for everyone. No matter where you are based or what your background is, you will be helping us scale our impact.
Do you have the feeling that our mission and goal are aligned with yours? Do you want to contribute to it, but you don’t know where to start? We are here to help you! You can contribute in several ways. You can become a buddy, which means leading a language group to share your language with others. Besides that, we also offer a social franchising program, “Take SPEAK to your City”, where changemakers who want to build inclusive communities can apply to become founders and start a SPEAK chapter in their own city. Lastly, you can contribute through the “pay what you want” model to help us keep access to SPEAK free for everyone, everywhere.
Remember, at SPEAK you can lead the change! Join a free language group today.