We’re Ruth and Lindsay, co-founders and co-coordinators of Culture Without Borders (CWB), a community school that teaches world languages through friendship. CWB started out as an online English as a Second Language (ESL) class in 2021. Ruth was a student in a level one ESL class that Lindsay was teaching. Ruth is a motivated and diligent student. She worked hard and got all A’s on all her formal assessments. But she left that class, and her several years of English instruction prior, feeling like she didn’t really speak the language. In spring of 2021, as the end of the semester neared, Ruth told Lindsay, “What I need to actually learn English is a friend. My work is in Spanish, my friends speak Spanish, my daughter speaks Spanish. How am I going to actually learn this language if I don’t have anyone to talk with?”

Since this conversation, the two of us have been working together to launch CWB. Through CWB we facilitate dialogue, knowledge-sharing, global citizenship, personal growth, meaningful relationships, and fun through language education. We have been growing and operating organically as a community organization since July, 2021. In 2023 we took the leap and transformed our informal self-managed community into an organized and sustainable economic venture.