John Hope Bryant

Mahatma Gandhi Quote of the Day

"There go my people, I must catch them...for I am their leader...."

Wisdom from Mahatma Gandhi, as shared with me by my personal hero Ambassador Andrew Young

 

HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway Explains How to Start a Dignity Day

Our friend and Global Dignity co-founder HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway narratives this inspiration video on how YOU can launch a Dignity Day session in your city, your community, your school!  

To get involved with Global Dignity Day 2012, on October 17th, 2012, go to the Global Dignity website or let project leader Shannon Campbell know of your interest.

Okay, let's go...

John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE and Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass), the only African-American bestselling business author in America, and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama.  Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S. He is also a co-founder of Global Dignity with HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum.   Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.

Operation HOPE Expands Reach to Include Financial Inclusion Meetings Worldwide

Global sessions to culminate this November at the HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit in Atlanta

 

LOS ANGELES – August 9, 2012 – Operation HOPE announced today the expansion of Local Financial Dignity & Inclusion Working Group Meetings to include government, community, faith, academia and private sector leaders of underserved communities around the world. Through HOPE’s technology, meetings will be recorded and included in the global Financial Dignity & Inclusion eLibrary to create a solution-based reservoir for financial dignity, financial inclusion and economic empowerment.

Read the complete story here at Operation HOPE.

 

Operation HOPE to Begin Hosting Financial Inclusion Meetings Nationwide

Leading up to its highly anticipated HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit, Operation HOPE plans to bring community, government and private sector leaders together in a series of important Local Financial Dignity & Inclusion Working Group Meetings to develop solutions for the future of free enterprise and capitalism. The meetings, recorded and included in the global Financial Dignity & Inclusion eLibrary developed by HOPE, will be delivered in a final report to the President of the United States in January 2013.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) July 24, 2012

Financial dignity nonprofit Operation HOPE announced today a plan that brings community, government and private sector leaders together in a series of Local Financial Dignity & Inclusion Working Group Meetings where participants will share thoughts and develop solutions for the future of free enterprise and capitalism for all. All meetings will be recorded and included in the global Financial Dignity & Inclusion eLibrary.

The Local Financial Dignity & Inclusion Working Group Meetings, designed to be inclusive of a broad range of voices and perspectives across America and internationally, from deep grassroots to corporate, government, academia and faith, will have only one rule and one objective; no complaints without associated recommended solutions, and framing the future. Specifically, a positive future vision of how we make free enterprise and capitalism work for all in a reset world.

“Financial dignity is the goal, financial inclusion is the way, and financial literacy is one of the many vitally important tools,” said HOPE Founder, Chairman and CEO John Hope Bryant.

The meetings will culminate at the HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit in November.

Operation HOPE Puts Atlanta Center Stage As Seat for Nonprofit’s Global Financial Dignity Summit

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to provide keynote remarks;

HOPE Global Financial Dignity Co-chairs, former Atlanta Mayor Ambassador Andrew Young and HOPE Founder John Hope Bryant slated to speak

 

THE SILVER RIGHTS MOVEMENT MEETS THE 21ST CENTURY AGENDA

 
ATLANTA – Silver Rights empowerment nonprofit Operation HOPE (HOPE) continues its 20-year anniversary celebrations, announcing today U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will headline its inaugural HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summit in Atlanta, November 14 – 15, 2012. Co-chaired by HOPE Founder, Chairman and CEO John Hope Bryant and former Atlanta Mayor and Civil Rights Icon, Ambassador Andrew Young, the event is expected to bring over 1,000 delegates from more than 50 countries worldwide.  

 

Young, who also serves as HOPE Global Spokesman, is a featured speaker for the event, Bryant will also play a key speaking role. William H. Rogers, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer SunTrust Bank is also set to lend remarks.

 

Against the backdrop of today’s global economic crisis, the summit is designed to help “turn the page,” toward viable long-term, systemic and sustainable economic solutions.  The theme of conference is Community, Character and Responsible Capitalism. The topics will examine how free enterprise and responsible capitalism can actually be used as a powerful tool to empower and uplift the underserved and the working class, as well as to grow and to stabilize a middle class.

 

The two-day event begins Wednesday, November 14, with a HOPE Opportunity Community Bus Tour, followed by the Grand Opening of the HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer (on Community), and the Global Dignity Forum (on Character), and the first day will conclude with a reception at the Atlanta Airport Marriot Gateway, concluding with the HOPE Global Summit on (on Responsible Capitalism) at the Georgia International Convention Center on Thursday, November 15.

 

Read about the complete global summit here.

Why I Decided I Would Just Love Everyone

It is not just that looking at a photo like this one inspires you beyond belief, and gives one a sense of the enormous potential of one world -- or even that a photo like this one just seems so natural. I have decided to love the world, because the world is me, and I am she.

Thanks to my friends at African Ancestry, a few years back I took a DNA test and "discovered" my own ancestry.  To my pleasant surprise, I was 71% Cameroon (in Africa), and actually from the same village as my mentor and friend Quincy Jones (what is the likelihood of that...), 26% European, and the rest of Indian, Asian and "other."  That meant to me, that if I somehow found a way to hate white folk, I would be hating myself. If I found a way to hate Asians, Indians or anyone else for that matter -- I was again hating myself.  It dawned on me that most everyone on the planet -- you included -- are of "mixed race" -- and that this fact made racism and discrimination base on race the silliest thing imaginable.

It also made me chuckle.  No longer would I have to prepare a moral speech for say the Grandmaster of the Klu Klux Klan.  I could simply give him a DNA test and await the results.  The likelihood that he has some measure of Black blood running through his veins is extremely high, and my guess is that he would just lose his mind from there (smile).

CGI America 2012: John Hope Bryant on Creating New Pathways to Opportunity | Operation HOPE Blog

 

CGI America 2012: John Hope Bryant on Creating New Pathways to Opportunity | Operation HOPE Blog.

The Next Banking Boom: The 2.5 Billion Unbanked Worldwide

Of the 5 billion adults in the world, staggeringly, only half have a bank account.

This is one of the huge findings from a global poll by the World Bank and Gallup, funded by the Gates Foundation. The report, by World Bank economists Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Leora Klapper, is brilliant.

This big finding means that 2.5 billion people are “unbanked,” therefore not participating in modern economic life. Advanced countries can feed them, clothe them, rush them medicine, school them -- but those people will never experience sustainable human development until they’re integrated into the global channels of buying and selling. Simply put, they need access to money and credit, and they need to have a bank account.

Read the complete and compelling story below.

The Next Banking Boom: The 2.5 Billion Unbanked Worldwide.

Operation HOPE Announces 20 Year Service Report Card

 

The Operation HOPE family is proud to present our 20th anniversary "Report Card" on financial dignity, service leadership and the financial and economic empowermwent of our people, to our people.  The below is our report to the world.  Let me know what you think of our global results to date, and the results we have achieved to date on behalf of others. 

Operation HOPE Announces 20 Year Service Report Card.

20 Years Old Today: Operation HOPE 's Founder Reports on Progress

20 years ago today, on May 5th, 1992, the organization that would change my life and give my life both purpose and incredible meaning -- Operation HOPE -- was born.  

Born after the worst riot and civil unrest in our nation's history, I remember my own personal frustration in the hours and days following the rioting in South Central Los Angeles. I also remember precisely right where I was, at the exact time when our community seemed to come unglued.  I was standing in my westside offices for Bryant Group Companies, then located at Santa Monica and Sepulveda Boulevard in the Westwood Gateway complex buildings.  I was standing there, looking at my community burn.  

I will tell my own personal story in a separate post, but needless to say, what I saw, made me want to act.  And act we did.  Soon, Operation HOPE had assembled its first loyal employees, led by my chief of staff Rachael Doff who is still with me today, soon followed by Lance Triggs, now executive vice president, and not long thereafter came Mary Hagerty, now Mrs. Mary Hagerty Ehrsam, who is first senior vice president and global chief of financial literacy. Then came our own Jena Roscoe, who literally walked out the door from her last job at the White House working in the second term of President Bill Clinton, to run our then new Operation HOPE Office of Government Relations and Public Policy.  And then there was my best friend Rod McGrew, who was the first HOPE Corps volunteer for the organization.  And then there was Fred Smith, our first president, and so many others. Slowly, all the executive and senior leadership team pieces began to come together.

HOPE has four principle divisions, HOPE Coalition America, HOPE Financial Dignity Centers (featuring 700 Credit Score Communities), Banking on Our Future and our newest division, HOPE Business In A Box (inclusive of the Gallup-HOPE Index), and has now been on the move for 20 years, serving South Central Los Angeles and countless underserved communities across the country; even around the world, just like it.  

Here is a quick snapshot of our global results (not including the work and results of Global Dignity, a sister organization to Operation HOPE):

$1.4 billion – the amount raised and invested by HOPE in and for the under-served population, from private and public sources. 

1,000 Plus - the number low-wealth homeowners and small business owners created and funded with responsible mortgage and small business loans.   

Just one of these countless minority owned small business success stories is Drobe Clothing (http://www.drobe.com/Story.html). I purchase all of my professional suits from this HOPE success story, paying full retail, which is recycling black dollars too. Drobe was created by a young black man, not much older than myself when I started Operation HOPE, and now it employs 6 local people, pays its local taxes, and in so doing adds to the whole of Los Angeles.  This is the real story of where most jobs come from.

$500 Million - the value of the subprime mortgages that the Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline has modified or restructured in the subprime crisis, at no cost to the borrower. 

155,243 – the number of individuals directly assisted by the National Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline.

241,577 – the number of individuals educated in the homebuyer, credit, small business, EITC, and foreclosure prevention workshops.

150,000 – the number of individuals HOPE served in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  And we are still there, serving others years after.

$15 Million – the amount of Earned Income Tax Credits funded to survivors of Hurricane Katrina alone.

273 – the number of cities in the U.S. and South Africa where HOPE currently exists.

5,000 – number of current HOPE partnerships with private sector companies, non-profit organizations, schools and government entities.

30,369 – the number youth and adults educated through the Banking on Our Future program in South Africa alone.

45,828 – the number HOPE Cyber Cafés memberships, including the Cyber Cafe at 3721 South La Brea Avenue, in L.A.

2,000,000 – individuals served to date through HOPE’s Empowerment programs, Banking on Our Future, the HOPE Financial Dignity Centers and HOPE Coalition America.

Today, HOPE is headquartered at Wilshire Boulevard and Hope Street in Downtown, L.A. and led there by our president and chief operating officer Mr. Bill Walbrecher.