John Hope Bryant

Solving Poverty: This Generation Needs An Economic Backup Plan

I recently met a very impressive young man while visiting with my father, Mr. Johnnie Will Smith, in Los Angeles, California.  This young man, who lived next door and is the son of one who helps to care for my proud and still self-powered father of 88 years young, possessed incredible vocal, musical, and even writing and producing talent.   In other words, he could not only sing and dance, he could 'think,' analyze and strategize too. The only problem with this young man's life success plan, as I shared with him, was that his primary dream plan did not have a practical backup plan.  And worse from my perspective, his backup plan, should really be his primary plan instead.  Let me explain.

Responsible rap (meaning rap that is true to its origins and roots), Hip-Hop, the broad world of celebrity, and our varied professional sports, are so very important to cultivate and carry forward as part of the larger African-American and minority success story framework for a race.  As Quincy Jones repeatedly burns into my soul and pounds into my thick head, "music, art and culture shapes the soul, helps to heal and bring together our world. They help to shape more well rounded people."  I agree with Q 100%.  

That said, having a career in music, the arts, entertainment (in front of the camera) and sports as the primary life success solution for more than 30 million African-Americans alone in this country, is just plain dumb.  Sure, a few lucky ones will make it through, but I would argue that most of them are not in fact all that 'lucky,' at the end of their career-day. A couple facts.

70% of all professional football players file bankruptcy within 5-years of retirement from the game, and there is a 100% injury rate amongst professional football players.

70% plus of all professional basketball players file bankruptcy within 5-years of retirement from the game.

And a vast majority of the "celebrity" artists, from rap to Hip-Hop and beyond, find themselves dead broke after a short, and often even highly visible career.  

Presenting the Operation HOPE Business in a Box, Atlanta Pilot Program Competition

 

This short video says it all. It is the "magic" that we have been talking about. That I have been dreaming about, ever since I came up with the vision of and for HOPE Business In A Box this time last year on my my birthday.  My birthday is February 6th, 2013, and seeing this vision made real is the best birthday present that this "proud pappa" could have (smile).

Thank you to Mary Hagerty, president of the HOPE Youth Empowerment Group, the Atlanta team, led by Jay Bailey, Tara Dennis (youth agenda) and others there, along with everyone who helped to make this real.  

A special thank you to Ms. Natasha L. Foreman, MBA, dedicated HOPE Corps volunteer, small business owner and the HOPE Business In A Box coordinator in Atlanta, Georgia.  She worked tirelessly to see this through from concept to reality for these bright young kids (our leaders for the future) in Atlanta.  

Gallup -HOPE Index 2012 Results Announced Today: U.S. Students' Entrepreneurial Aspirations Still Undeveloped

Children of business owners more entrepreneurially inclined

by Valerie J. Calderon and Shane Lopez

WASHINGTON D.C. -- Entrepreneurial aspirations among fifth- through 12^th-graders in the U.S. remained high and stable over the past year, according to the 2012 Gallup-HOPE Index. About four in 10 students (43%) say they plan to start their own business. Similarly, four in 10 students (42%) say they will invent something that changes the world.

Girls (46%) were slightly more likely to agree they plan to start their own business than boys (40%). Boys (45%) were slightly more likely than girls (40%) to say they will invent something that changes the world.

Read and download the complete report here at Gallup.

 

The Aspen Institute and the Re-Winning of America

It is appropriate that almost immediately following the Aspen Institute's annual Ideas Festival, Ambassador Andrew Young and I would speak at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Summit, organized by our friend Lisa Mensah and her team. It was a well organized and purposeful meeting, but such is not the point.

Inspired by the Ideas Festival, columnist David Brooks wrote a piece for The New York Times last week entitled "The Opportunity Gap". This piece troubled most people who read it, but it only confirmed what Ambassador Young and I, and our friend Jim Clifton, chairman and CEO of Gallup, already knew; that there was a hug and widening gap not only between the rich and poor adults in this country, but more frighteningly, amongst our children. Brooks article, all backed up by evidence, stats and comprehensive research, also makes the point that my mentor Quincy Jones has made to us repeatedly, and drives his involvement in our 5 MILLION KIDS initiative and the recent launch of the Banking on Our Future, Quincy Jones Edition: that "it takes 20 years to change a culture."

David Brooks states that:

It's not only that richer kids have become more active. Poorer kids have become more pessimistic and detached. Social trust has fallen among all income groups, but, between 1975 and 1995, it plummeted among the poorest third of young Americans and has remained low ever since. As Putnam writes in notes prepared for the Aspen Ideas Festival: "It's perfectly understandable that kids from working-class backgrounds have become cynical and even paranoid, for virtually all our major social institutions have failed them -- family, friends, church, school and community." As a result, poorer kids are less likely to participate in voluntary service work that might give them a sense of purpose and responsibility. Their test scores are lagging. Their opportunities are more limited.

This is the way that David Brooks frames this generational crisis of 20 years. I would say that in the last 20 years we have made dumb sexy. We have dumbed-down, and even celebrated it (example: Diesel Jeans and their horribly successful BE STUPID branding and advertising campaign). Now we must make smart sexy again. We must make smart cool, so that kids want to stay in school.

Against this backdrop, we also must look at not only the generational advantages of the wealthy, but the incentive structure that is helping to make engaged and wealthy kids more engaged and wealthy, and so-called poor children more disengaged, disinterested and in the end, opportunity poor. We must look at the educational incentive system itself.

READ THE COMPLETE HUFFINGTON POST ARTICLE HERE.

 

Financial Literacy to Financial Dignity Quote of the Day

"Banking on Our Future helps youth to not be taken advantage of in their communities. HOPE Business In A Box will help youth to take advantage of the growing 'opportunity' in their lives."

John Hope Bryant


John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, 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 the U.S., 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.

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Grammy-award winner Quincy Jones on financial dignity, the "civil rights issue of our generation"

His mission to bring hope and dignity to young people and their parents--through practical economic education.

Is there a tipping point for justice? Yes, according to John Hope Bryant, founder, chairman and CEO, of Operation HOPE, a not-for-profit organization focused on expanding economic opportunity in underserved communities through economic education and empowerment.

“The goal of 5MK is to reach, teach and touch five million kids in five years about the importance of understanding the language of money, entrepreneurship and the importance of education.”-Quincy Jones

Citing Malcolm Gladwell’s book Tipping Point, Bryant notes that “when five percent of citizens are [economically] positively and actively engaged a community becomes stabilized.” The end result is financial dignity, which Bryant calls “the civil rights issue of our generation.” He says, “There are almost no role models in ‘low-wealth’ communities.”

Reaching five million children

Operation HOPE’s Five Million Kids (5MK) Initiative is focused on creating a mainstream financial literacy movement in America by leveraging current trends on behalf of kids and their parents. “Our kids are brilliant, but their lives have been hijacked by a culture that celebrates celebrities and sports and equates being dumb with being cool. We need to flip that on its head,” Bryant says.

That’s where Grammy-award winner Quincy Jones comes in. Mr. Jones and the civil rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young are the National Co- Chairs of 5MK.

Bryant explains, “Quincy Jones is one of the few global brands who is relevant to every generation whether you like Kanye West, Jay-Z, or Dizzy Gillespie.”

Quincy Jones says, “The goal of 5MK is to reach, teach and touch five million kids in five years about the importance of understanding the language of money, entrepreneurship and the importance of education.”

Making capitalism work for everyone

Read the complete article here.

 

 

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.

Historic Images: Morning of the HOPE 20th Anniversary Opportunity Bus Tour, 2012

 

When pictures tell the entire story.

Distinguished co-chairs included Peter Ueberroth, then chairman of Rebuild Los Angeles; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa; AEG Worldwide CEO Tim Leiweke, civil rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young who had visited the same community with his friend Dr. Martin Luther King; Jr. following the Watts Riots; entertainment icon and entrepreneur Quincy Jones, who unveiled a powerful “answer” to and for the youth of the future on this day in April, 2012; along with COGIC Presiding Bishop Charles E. Blake who built a $60 million cathedral in the months following the unrest; and Reverend Dr. Cecil “Chip” Murray who is single-handedly credited with bringing peace to South Los Angeles in the days following the unrest.

This is Making Smart Cool ~ "New Knerds" Push Education

"New Knerds" Push Education: MyFoxATLANTA.com

 This is what we are talking about, when we talk about the 5 MILLION KIDS MOVEMENT, or 5MK, and "making smart cool," so kids stay in school.  Let's go...