Gosh - a way volunteers COULD actually help us... interested?

We get lots of very, VERY kind offers to help us - on a volunteer basis - which is always hugely encouraging, not to mention inspiring.

And usually, I have to say ‘It would be great - and I’m not really sure what we’ve got that you could actually help with at the moment’.

Makes me feel a bit daft - but we’ve got Ifan slaving away on the SSiBorg (and it’s always tricky to add volunteer devs to a big piece of work like that, although we’re keen to do more in that direction in the future) - and then we’re always trying to solve ‘how to sell more Spanish lessons so we can employ more people and build more stuff’ - and then ‘building/recording Welsh’, which is not really possible for most of our volunteers…

But now…

Something which genuinely might make a gigantic difference…

You might have seen that we’re trying to figure out how to get more people using the Spanish course on Facebook, to see if we can offer our unique accelerated residential courses successfully (at a price closer to the big European language centres).

At the same time, we’ve got an idea that might change everything.

We’d like to get in touch with hotels in Spanish-speaking countries, and suggest to them that if they offered their international visitors a chance to add a (particularly good!) tourist Spanish course to their booking, we could have a win-win situation.

And…

It would be a long, horrible slog for one person - we need to build a spreadsheet of hotels, with contact email addresses and (ideally) managers’ names - and then send them a standard email (which I’ll write) - and then deal with any responses (either by email, or by chatting with them knowing what the SSi deal/offer/limits are, or by passing them on to me).

But…

It’s exactly the kind of thing where a team of people, doing a few minutes each week, can get things moving at impressive speed.

And even just a few hotels doing this could make a game-changing difference for us…

So, everyone who’s ever offered, or ever thought of offering - how about this?

Would you be kind enough to come onboard for a while and see how it goes?

:star: :star2: :heart:

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Backpacker hostels may also be a good target as backpackers are always looking for bargains and pass the word on.

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Yup! :slight_smile:

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Another thought, many hotels in Spain will have staff from other EU countries.
As an incentive, could it be offered to the non Spanish speaking staff too?

Would it also work for Welsh hotels?

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Would like to help

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I’m happy to help - but I don’t speak any Spanish.

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Ooh, that’s an excellent thought… :slight_smile:

No need to be a Spanish speaker to help with this - we’ll need people to do one or more of the following:

  • put hotel/hostel names, email addresses, and managers’ names into a spreadsheet
  • take details from the spreadsheet, put them into a pre-written email and send
  • discuss via email and/or phone - OR pass any responses on to me… :slight_smile:

PM me your email address saying ‘Spanish team!’ or something like that, and I’ll add you to the spreadsheet, and we can start… :star: :star2:

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HUGE thanks to our first volunteers - you might well turn out to be the seed group who help kick SSi into real growth… which we will NOT forget… :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :star: :star2:

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Is there already a shared spreadsheet for this purpose? If so, I’d be happy to enter the four hotels we stayed in a couple of years ago in Barcelona, Zaragoza, Rural Rioja and Bilbao. I can do spreadsheets of course and would be happy to develop one in Google Docs.

Barcelona and Bilbao have their own languages, of course, which are spoken in parallel with Spanish. Would this present a problem? I wouldn’t have thought so because both the Catalan and Basque hotel receptionists initiated contact in Spanish and dealt with my Sapnish (a) responses with amused tolerance. :slight_smile:

I think @ianblandford’s point is a good one especially when you can offer Spanish to hotel staff through the medium of other European languages.

edit: (a) This is not a typo. :laughing:

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Invitation sent… diolch o galon… :slight_smile:

Yes, I think that’s a touch of brilliant from Ian, will really help warm up the email and add value to the suggestion… :slight_smile:

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4 hotels & 2 explanatory comments added. :smile:

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Diolch o galon!

It’s very exciting watching the spreadsheet start to populate - if we stick at it, I really think this might be the big step forward we’ve been working towards… :slight_smile:

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I would get in but I was nowhere else than Lloret de Mar twice a really long time ago so all I could offer is Internet research. However I believe for that part you already have enough people to do that and I don’t want to be a “false number provider” of how many people really does the job …

And a word of caution about Catalugna. They fight for their language just like Welsh people fight for their own so don’t be surprised to face some negatives with the offers there aswell. But … you know that better than I do already anyway …

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Good point which reflects mine made above. :smile:

Barcelona and Bilbao have their own languages, of course, which are spoken in parallel with Spanish. Would this present a problem?

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That’s the key element here! And we currently have 4 people helping with this - it would be a delight (and enormously helpful to SSi) to have dozens more… :slight_smile:

OK, then count me in. You have my e-mail anyway … One more point: what’s actually included - Europe or all what you can find speaking spanish as a common language?

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I think to begin with, it’ll be simpler if we just stick to Spain - if it works there, then we can expand further… :slight_smile: Diolch, Tatjana… :slight_smile:

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Terrific - we’re up to 40 hotels already - thank you all SO much… :star: :star2:

I know this is tedious, monotonous and faintly frustrating work - but it has a genuinely huge amount of potential for us.

I’m hoping to start sending out emails (on my own and with anyone who fancies helping!) next week - once this current 5 day intensive is over… :slight_smile:

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I’ll be happy to help with sending e-mails if & when you want. :smile:

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Brilliant - diolch o galon - I’ll be in touch in about a week… :slight_smile: :star: :star2: