from: Jason West <jason at languagesoutthere.com>
to: mail@fairtrade.org.uk

date18 July 2009 12:47
subjectnon-food product licensing enquiry
mailed-bygmail.com

Dear Fair Trade
 
We are very interested in the possibility of becoming a Fair Trade English language teaching and learning provider.
 
It is well documented that being able to speak English can dramatically improve someone's earning potential in the developing world. Our courses, both for teachers to deliver and students to self-study (developed during 8 years of testing and teaching to paying students in London), are now available online and in print and are the only English courses we know of that:
 
1. Are designed to be taught literally anywhere, don't require classrooms and deliberately use public space to dramatically reduce costs and the environmental impact.
2. Are designed to enable non-native speaker English teachers to improve their own English language skills easily and affordably but also earn money teaching locally or online with the same materials and to even open their own sustainable English teaching businesses with just a few materials and instructions, charging what they like and keeping all of the fees themselves.
3. Turn any public space into an instant English school.
4. Turn any internet cafe into an instant English language school and online language laboratory with real native speaker practice.
5. Provide highly valuable focused real practice with fluent and native speakers to students who cannot afford to travel or to attend local courses taught by immigrant native speaker teachers.
6. Build social and cultural understanding and friendship between people of all nations, backgrounds and incomes.
7. Reduce carbon emissions from people travelling to take traditional study abroad and immersion language programmes by removing the need to travel.
8. Are much more affordable than existing conventional materials for schools, colleges and teachers in the developing world to purchase and use.
9. Are capable of being taught and used by learners at a fraction of what existing 'quality' programmes cost.
10. Provide immense scalability without any loss of quality.
11. Actively involve the growing numbers of retired teachers and English speakers in the developed world who are 'silver-surfers' and who wish to help make a difference to peoples' lives in the developing world.
12. Are an ideal investment for companies that take corporate social responsibility seriously.
 
The list doesn't end there...
 
English is the first language we have developed our unique materials to teach but we are not English language imperialists and intend to create our materials in other global languages so that, for example, English speakers can learn Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi or Swahili our way.
 
We look forward to learning more about Fair Trade and how we can play our part in making the provision of quality English language training and practice considerably more scaleable, affordable, empowering, effective, sustainable and environmentally friendly.
 
Kind regards
 
Jason
Founder

I've not had a reply yet and I chased them up (sent them a reminder).  Can't think why, can you?