Our mission is to enable small business owners and budding entrepreneurs from under-served communities obtain financial success by starting, operating, and building successful businesses that develop economic power, provide jobs and improve communities.

Description and/or History:
Founded in 1966 in Harlem, Workshop in Business Opportunities (WIBO) is a private non-profit organization that provides a 16-week workshop, How to Build a Growing Profitable Business, to those men and women with the drive to become entrepreneurs. The workshop is offered in 9 locations: Downtown Brooklyn, Central Brooklyn, Lower East Side, Harlem, Washington Heights, South Bronx, South East Queens, Long Island City & Yonkers. Other services include: small business advising, small business seminars and small business accounting and legal clinics. WIBO serves over 700 entrepreneurs each year.
Workshop in Business Opportunities began in response to the absence of economic power in the African-American community. The founders, a Midtown business owner and a Harlem attorney, believed that economic, political and social equality would be achieved most quickly and effectively by training and assisting minorities to build growing profitable businesses of their own. The founders recruited a volunteer faculty of twenty-four business owners and senior executives, each one a specialist in one or more aspects of running a successful business, to conduct the classes. WIBO's first sixteen-week workshop, How to Build a Growing Profitable Business, opened in Harlem on March 5, 1966. Fifteen students enrolled, fourteen graduated, and eleven either started businesses or expanded existing businesses within a year. Word of WIBO's success quickly spread and within five years, WIBO workshops were running in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, New Jersey and Westchester.

Contact people:

Nancy Caballero, Program Manager, (212) 684-0854 x0543, (email) Amini Kajunju, Executive Director, (212) 684-0854 x0539, (email)

Address:

245 West 17th Street 11th Floor New York, NY 10011 (See a map)

Directions:

Between 7th Ave & 8th Ave. Chelsea, west side of Manhattan.   Nearest Metro/Subway Stop: A, C, E, 1, 9 to 14th Street,   Walk distance (in minutes): 2 min.