TOLEDO, Ohio — A crowd gathered at the Kent Branch Library in central Toledo on Tuesday to celebrate the approximately 50 people graduating from Mercy Health's Getting Your Business Rolling program.
The free eight-week course teaches small business owners and those aspiring to start how to be successful entrepreneurs by covering all business-related topics, said Megan Reichert, Mercy Health's director of innovation.
"How to make a mission statement, how to make an elevator pitch so you can do business-to-business interactions," Reichert said. "We talk about marketing, we talk about understanding financials."
She said the course targets communities with low household incomes and at least 50% unemployment.
"We have a lot of vacant commercial property around Toledo, we'd like to see it filled with our entrepreneurs," Reichert said.
While the graduating entrepreneurs now feel empowered, they said it was challenging at times.
"Blessed to be able to do something like this and finish," said program graduate Vinietta Moore. "Sometimes it can be intimidating to be around so many people and feel like you don't have it together and it seems like everyone else does."
Moore and other graduates plan to use what they learned to start businesses that better the community.
Course graduate Taji Mcclellan said she plans to use what she's learned to honor her late son.
"I had a son that was murdered seven years ago, and my ideas came after that," she said. "I said, 'well, I have to do something to honor my son's name.'"
She will be starting a cleaning business named after her son called Todd's Powerful Cleaning Hands.
Reichert said she couldn't be prouder of the graduates.
"They're filling a need in our community," she said.