Area program equips people with entrepreneurial skills

The Goodwill MicroEnterprise Institute was born during a crisis — in 2010 in response to the recession. “A group of community leaders got together and did multiple sessions about how do we get people back to jobs or businesses,” Program Coordinator Dorothy Browning says. “They came across the concept of microenterprises.”

The program, an initiative of Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida, based in Fort Myers, has since spent the past decade giving people the knowledge needed to become an entrepreneur, with a specific focus on people with low- to moderate-incomes. It's notched some big successes in that time: More than 900 graduates are now equipped with skills to start a small business, and alumni have launched some 460 businesses.