The Story Behind The Idea | Interview With Hugo

SPEAK focuses on promoting inclusive cities. What do you believe is an inclusive city?

SPEAK believes in a world where cities are inclusive and for us, this means that each and every one of us, regardless of our economic means, gender, race, ethnicity or religion, are able to be who we are and feel at home in the place where we live, independently if it’s our home city or not. For us, feeling at home is a culmination of different things that come together to create a whole, like having meaningful relationships, a support network, equal right to opportunities, feeling a sense of safety and belonging, and not facing communication issues due to a language barrier.

Our mission focuses on the way people are perceived by others and how we can work to reduce the gap and knowledge between newcomers and locals.?

At SPEAK we bring together newcomers and locals living in the same city through in-person or online community-led language groups and cultural exchange events. Through these experiences participants learn from each other, explore common interests and make new friends, breaking down barriers and tackling prejudice in their cities along the way.

Achieving this goal allows us to contribute to societies where newcomers have access to the same opportunities as locals through the network that is created.

What have been the moments that made it feel worth it?

There are several moments that made us feel we are on the right track. The pandemic was such a moment. We took it as an opportunity, we had to change the entire program to an online model, while we previously focused on face-to-face interactions. With the online model, we were able to reach people we would not have been able to reach otherwise. We worked with organisations such as ORAM that works with refugees from Latin America who are part of the LGBTQI community and people in Greece, Syria, and Germany. We also noticed that more people were feeling lonely and isolated with the pandemic, especially groups already at risk such as the eldery and migrants.

We saw great results when moving online, we reached 5 times more people in the first half of 2020 and we had people sharing their experience with us. Maria Eduarda, a doctor and participant at SPEAK, shared her experience: “SPEAK has been a great help in my daily life. As a health professional, it is difficult for me to have the opportunity to learn a language in an intensive way without an online solution. During this pandemic, although I’m working every day at the hospital, I spend my free time online with SPEAK. I’m learning a lot and meeting really interesting people in the language groups. In these strange times that we live, SPEAK brings me a sense of normality, allowing me to socialize with people from all over the world and find out so much more about other cultures. I’m delighted to be part of this community! My experience with SPEAK has been exceptional!”

What aspects of your business are non-negotiable?

“How can we reach more people?”

“How can we create a bigger social impact?”?

These are the questions we ask ourselves every day. For us, anything that compromises our social impact is non-negotiable. We are solution-focused, and obstacles or processes that affect our ability to create impact are non-negotiable. This is why we decided to democratize access to SPEAK for everyone, everywhere, by pivoting our model from paid language groups to free language groups.?

Deciding to provide our solution for free is something we did after putting a lot of thought into it. It was not an easy decision, but we realized it was a move that would truly help scale our mission. It would help us make an impact on the number of people who can benefit from SPEAK, and subsequently, have access to support networks and improve their feeling of belonging.?

If there is a solution that allows us to help more and do better - we will do it.

How do you see the future of SPEAK??

SPEAK has a presence in 25 cities and we are able to reach people in a lot more places because of our online model. However, at SPEAK, we always aim to be ambitious. There are many more people who need our support, and we know that we need to do whatever we can to provide them access to our services.?

We are focused primarily on improving the journey of our participants, and we are also keeping our eyes open for socially-oriented entrepreneurs who can scale our mission by founding their own SPEAK cities.?

We are looking for strong partnerships with organizations in many different forms, including providing available spaces for our physical language and culture groups, contributions for our "pay what you want" model, and also business-related partnerships on diversity and inclusion within the workforce of companies.?

Promoting social integration and inclusion is a shared responsibility. We strongly believe that with the power of collective action, we will be able to move the needle and scale social impact together.

Hugo Menino Aguiar is the co-founder and CEO of SPEAK. Visit SPEAK’s website for more information: https://www.speak.social/