John Hope Bryant

HOPE Snippet: Operation HOPE Renews Partnership with the Peace Corps South Africa

HOPE Founder and Chairman in South Africa to sign historic agreement focused on developing empowerment opportunities for youth and women

 

Pretoria, South Africa– May 16, 2013– Global financial dignity nonprofit Operation HOPE (HOPE) announced their goal to fuel entrepreneurship, increase life skills, and hone leadership tools for youth, women, and families in rural communities within five provinces, during an official renewal signing ceremony on April 23rd, at the Peace Corps South Africa office in Pretoria. (watch the Chariman speak about volunteering) 

 

Through the renewal, both organizations will continue working together to expand HOPE’s financial literacy initiative, Banking on Our Future. The initiative aims to reduce the 25% unemployment rate in South Africa by promoting financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and dignity through empowerment training sessions. Community growth and development is measured before and after each session using HOPE research and assessment tools.

Read the complete story here.

Stop Complaining About Your Problems

This seemingly happy family (meaning, they get their joy from their inner being, and not their material possessions, which were not many) in a township in South Africa live on the equivalent of $2 a day.  I met this dignity rich family while touring Operation HOPE South Africa's work in the country.

The young lady in the middle, who is 19 and now attending a good school (which by the way, she and her family have to pay for out of their already thin pockets), is my hope for South Africa.  She is full of hope and as smart as can be.  All she desired was an opportunity, and she would do the rest.

The only time that she stopped and felt any sadness at all in our presence, is when she broke down and cried about the conditions of her township. How (from her perspective) elected officials care very little about addressing the concerns, and conditions that they find themselves in today.

A Teacher-Leader Testimonial on our work from Operation HOPE South Africa

 

 

 

Good Afternoon Mr John Bryant  I do hope that I find you well. I would like to thank you for sparing your time and effort to come and address my learners at Sandtonview Combined School, on Monday the 22rd of April 2013. Your presentation was so inspiring to me as the Educator/Teacher at the school working with the learners everyday and to the learners at large. Its always good to hear from the "best of the best" in entrepreneurship in the world. We as a school were so fortunate and privileged to say the least. According to your stuff members, this was a first in South Africa where a programme was started and we were first to have a one on one conversation with the founding father of the organisation.    I would like extend my sencere gratitude to you once again for giving one of my learners, the opportunity of a lifetime, a paid internship with your organisation on completion/graduation. This has already motivated the youngster to even do better in his school-work and in terms of his behaviour right here at school. All the young business learners are so earger to follow in your footsteps and that of your partner Natasha Foreman. The opportunity that you have given these learners is on that they will never forget in their lifetime. In addition I have also learnt, in my personal capacity as an Educator, various life changing lessons through your presentation. Your use of Twee and George in the selling of drugs and their death brought tears to my eyes. You know why? Its just because I am sitting in this classroom in front of my learners, some of whom are already using these drugs and its painfull as you see them destroying their own lives and what you tell them they do not even listern to you due to a variety of factors. Sir, your example on pregnant school girls, a reality that I see each and every teaching day of my life. I keep hoping that the ones that I have managed to inspire and brought to Operation Hope's Banking On Our Future programme will be inspired as iI did and be able to take their lives into a better future. Alutah continua with "Operation Hope" in South Africa and through-out the world as it is the only vehicle that will drive hunger and under-development from our continent.  May the Almighty protects you from all forms of evil so that one day I will meet you again and relieve to you my own personal life journey that I would have travelled. Regards Ganyiwa Isaac Educator: Sandtonview Combined School, South Africa

 

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Ambassador Andrew Young Quote of the Day

"You can make more money honestly, from a growing economy, than you steal --- from a dying economy."

Ambassador Andrew Young, speaking to African heads of state at a Rev. Leon Sullivan summit years ago I attended. Still stays with me...



John Hope Bryant

Huffington Post ~ Solving Poverty: What South Africa Needs Now Are Jobs

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

 

I just returned from an inspring, and in parts equally frustrating trip to South Africa, supporting my on-the-ground team working for Operation HOPE, South Africa.

Inspiring because, well who would not be inspired by all that is South Africa. The cultural richness, the spirit of the people, and the energy present wherever you go. Or the natural beauty of the place, all the untapped resources, and the incredible opportunity to create real, even transformational change throughout the country. And all the stories...

The young boys and girls we spoke with me in a local school, who once exposed to the concept of entrepreneurship, vowed to keep both their heads and their grades high until graduation. They wanted very to become their own job in the future (owning their own business). Imagine looking out over a sea of young 16 year-olds, witnessing for yourself a new generation of committed entrepreneurs, job creators and leaders being born. Inspiring indeed.

Or the elderly women whom we met at a cheetah observation park who proudly announced to us that she had achieved an 'NQ4 financial business management designation' from the local Cape Technical College, allowing her to become (her description here) an "advanced and better skilled" small business owner. This wonderful lady was selling handmade South African products under a covered tent at the cheetah park, but for her this might as well have been a ritzy brick and mortar facility in downtown Cape Town. She was anowner of her own destiny, and she even made me feel this immense sense of pride she had, in doing for herself. An pride of creating her own job.

Read and comment on the full Huffington Post article here.

 

 

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South African Economic Factoid

Johannesburg, South Africa produces 33% of South Africa's total GDP, and fully 10% of the total GDP for the entire African continent.

 

 

Bloomberg Businessweek Archives: IF BILL GATES WERE BLACK...

Companies & Industries

If Bill Gates Were Black...

This is still one of my favorite articles.  As appropriate now, as when it was first published in Bloomberg Businessweek.  Share, comment, reflect, and let me know what you think.

It's time for a new movement.

If Bill Gates were black, it would be less important that President Barack Obama is black. This is no slight to President Obama. It is an acknowledgment that while the route to success has changed, for too many in the black and minority community, their game plan has not.

For much of the past century, African Americans pursued social justice through government intervention, the ballot box, and ultimately elective office. While the number of black mayors and elected officials in this country is impressive, the number of black entrepreneurs is not. As a result, job creation in underserved communities, and among the black middle class, is stagnant.

The main driver of freedom in the world today is not the vote but access to capital. When I speak of capital, I obviously mean financial capital, but I also mean the Latin root word capitas, or “knowledge in the head.” That means financial literacy education, financial capability, and financial and economic empowerment.

Read the complete article on Bloomberg Businessweek here.

 

 

Impressive Leader for Africa's Future, Who Also Happens to be Black

Funeka Montjane,
Image by: Arnold Pronto

I am so very impressed by the smart, focused, intelligent, educated, thoughtul and thoroughly results oriented leadership talent that I continue to see at the top of some of South Africa's top businesses and corporations.  This young lady, Ms. Funeka Montjane, is but one example.

I have the pleasure of meeting her tomorrow morning around our growing portfolio of 'silver rights' empowerment work in South Africa, being done by Operation HOPE, South Africa; but I wanted you to meet her first.  That's how impressed I am with her.  I want you to know her here, even before I meet her in person (smile).

You can read the complete article on her here.  What an inspiration.  And no, we have no examples of a Black woman running a major banking division in the United States.  At least, not yet (a positive challenge to all of my friends in U.S. banking here).

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 is a thought leader represented by the Bright Sight Group for public speaking. Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation (NYSE: ACRE), a specialty finance company that is managed by an affiliate of Ares Management LLC, a global alternative asset manager with approximately $59 billion in committed capital under management as of December 31, 2012. 

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Bryant Speaks at South African School on Financial Dignity and Hope for Their Futures

Today I was jazzed to spend time with a group of future business builders, future industrialists, future entrepreneurs and future leaders for modern South Africa, in Johanessburg. 

Sure, South Africa has problems and many challenges, but her true hope lies within these young people. And on this day, today, they showed me the best that they had and I was impressed.  Truth be told, young people in the states could learn a thing or two about being hopeful for one's future in the face of adversity, and no matter what one's circumstances, doing something about it.

This is the inspiring story of so many that I met today.  Many, who looked me in the eyes and with all sincerity made clear their commitment to rise to their own level of human potential. For South Africa, and for our world over.

John Hope Bryant and Operation HOPE Team Visits South Africa This Week

I am honored to be spending the week in South Africa this week, focused on our silver rights empowerment work at Operation HOPE, South Africa, being done in more than six provinces in the country.  

While here I will be encouraging a spirit of entrepreneurship, small business ownership and what I call individual job creation (self-employment projects) amongst the generation of young people coming up today in the country.  

These young people have benefited from the incredible and life-changing civil rights justice work done by the likes of former President Nelson Mandela, and my friend Archbishop-Emeritus Desmond Tutu, but all too often these same young people are not seeing that history and tradition translate into what I would call silver rights empowerment opportunities for all, today.  And that means they are then less interested in school, less interested in their families, less interested in "doing right," and less hope for themselves. And the most dangerous person in the world, is the person with no hope.

Our financial literacy work started here 6-years ago has been helpful, and I want to publicly thank the likes of Angela Motshekga, Sean Cleary, Ambassador Andrew Young and former mayor Herman Bailey, all who encouraged me early on to start the office here.  That said, it is not enough.