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.

Huffington Post ~ Solving Poverty: A Business Plan Called 'Hard Work'

 

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

Real success does not have to be complicated when a commitment to work is present.

This week I met Mr. Eric McLean, a mobile notary public here in Atlanta, Ga. who came by my office to have me sign some documents. As we signed documents I asked a fairly simply question -- "Eric, how did you become a notary?" I just assumed that this was a part time source of income for Eric. That's what I get for assuming.

Eric told me that he sort of stumbled into the business, paying $36 for a notary stamp to the City. He committed himself to working hard, and his first month he told me he made over $1,000.00 in extra income. By his 8th month in business, he was making $17,000.00 --- per month! At moments like this I am reminded that often times the blue collar worker driving the beat up plumber's van often makes more money and a better living than the so-called professional in the Mercedes Benz next to him on the highway.

Eric the notary went on to tell me that he had 10 other mobile notaries working for him in around Atlanta, another 35 mobile notaries in the state, and more than 150 mobile notaries in what he called his "national network." His national what?

Read the complete story here.

 

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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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Operation HOPE, South Africa Report Card 2013

I was inspired to spend a week with my HOPE, South Africa team last week, and found that they have made significant progress around our original promise of instilling and embedding principals of core consumer protection amongst a vulnerable population of women and children.  

Going forward, we will be forging a bold new agenda focused on both consumer protection, and consumer empowerment too -- all leading to local GDP, jobs, small business ownership, entrepreneurship, and important in Africa, creating a generation of what we call "self-employment projects."

Here is a summary of our Operation HOPE, South Africa team's impressive results on the ground there:

• 40,752 youth and adults educated and empowered with financial literacy over the past 5-years.
• 1,739 youth and adults educated and empowered during the first quarter of 2013 alone.
• Approximately 2,000 HOPE Corps volunteers recruited, trained and mobilized in South Africa alone.
• 65 partners supporting our work, inclusive of Sanlam Insurance, our lead signature partner, Citi, the Banking Association of South Africa, the Nelson Mandela Children's Fund and the Peace Corps South Africa amongst others.
• Operation HOPE and Banking on Our Future embedded into 60 local schools throughout South Africa.

From the civil rights justice of Nelson Mandela's bold generation of leaders, to the silver rights empowerment agenda available to this one, Operation HOPE is committed to the future prosperity of this great country, and the African continent overall.

Let's go.

John Hope Bryant

 

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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.

 

 

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.

The HUFFINGTON POST ~ Solving Poverty: Atlanta in Black and Green, the Tale of Two Cities

   

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

As I noted in another 'Solving Poverty' piece for The Huffington Post, the new racism today is actually poverty.

Yes, it feels really bad if a racist calls you a highly offensive name, but it is completely un-dignifying when you cannot pay your rent, make your mortgage payment, or you find that your car has been repossessed by the lender while you were sleeping. You can walk away from the racist. And more so, when you know who you are, there is actually very little the racist can say or do to change the way you feel about yourself.

You cannot walk away from poverty.

The reality of poverty faces you as a parent every morning when your child looks up at you for lunch money, and as you reach into your pocket, finding only lent and marked up job wanted ads instead.

Or every time you stop for gasoline and have to stop the pump at $6, or you're at the grocery store, intent on collecting the ingredients for that special meal for your family, but finding that you are $20 short and have to put the healthiest choices back.

Poverty faces you in the unfortunately regular arguments you have with your spouse or mate (money is the number one cause for domestic abuse and divorce in America today), or the first time you have to address your teenage child, whose daydreaming about which four-year college they desperately wish to attend. And today, what I am describing is not a 'Black thing,' it's a 'green thing.'

Whether you are white, black, red, brown or yellow, today you just want to see some more green. U.S. currency, that is. We are all in this mess together.

Read, comment and share the complete article on the Huffington Post here.

 

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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. 

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.  

50th Anniversary of the Letter from a Birmingham Jail, by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013, not only is the date for the HOPE Forum discussion on the future of silver rights empowerment for all, at Dr. King and Daddy King's historic church, and the HOPE Financial Dignity Center Ebenezer now attached to it, it is also the very important 50th anniversary of Dr. King's famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

It is therefore very appropriate that one key Operation HOPE board member in the Southeast, Reverend Dr. Bernice A. King, the daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., heads back to Birmingham, Alabama on this important day, in honor of her father's work and legacy.  We encourage all men and women of good will to join her there in Birmingham, Alabama.

And a friend of that movement, Operation HOPE, also stays behind in Dr. King's homebase of Atlanta, Georgia, hosting the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry (regulating more than $12 trillion in banking assets across the nation), in a continuing discussion around silver rights empowermernt for all, and how we advance entrepreneurship, ownership, opportunity and capital flow into the very low-wealth communities that Dr. King and his aide Andrew Young (now Ambassador Andrew Young), were so very concerned about.  

Support one anniversary event or the other, but in no case, should we decide to do nothing.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail was for me, arguably the best and important of Dr. King's writings.  Possibly even more powerful than his better known I Have A Dream speech in Washington, D.C.  That said, the work continues.  The work to empower and uplift the least of these God's children, even continues on the 50th anniversary of this great work, and Dr. King's great sacrifice.

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 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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