Opportunities Industrialization Center

Opportunities Industrialization Center (doing business as OIC of America, Inc. and OIC International, Inc.) is a nonprofit adult education and job training organization headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with offices located in Washington, D.C. and Burma Camp, Accra, Ghana.

OIC operates 38 affiliated centers in 22 U.S. states and 20 international centers in Africa, Haiti and Poland that provide General Education Development studies and workforce development courses to help economically disadvantaged persons, minority communities, and adults and adolescents seeking to complete or resume their education and obtain employment.

OIC was founded on 1964, when Dr. Leon Sullivan, a civil rights leader and pastor of the Zion Baptist Church in Philadelphia, started an education and job training facility in a converted former jailhouse on 19th and Oxford Streets in North Philadelphia. The program was developed to provide job training and instruction in life skills to disenfranchised peoples with few prospects, and helped place participants into the workforce. Sullivan discovered that thousands of Philadelphia residents in lower-income communities were unemployed, despite a surplus in job vacancies during that time. He believed that finding employment opportunities would generate economic development and empower African Americans over dependence on public assistance programs; this led to the launch of a "selective patronage" campaign, designed as a boycott against Philadelphia-area companies that were not practicing equal opportunity in employment.