On April 27th, 2013, the King Center unveiled the Coretta Scott King commemorative rose, and I was honored and pleasantly surprised to return home from one of my many trips to find two of the beautiful roses at my home.
The roses were a gift from my friend and HOPE board member Dr. Bernice A. King, CEO of the King Center (a post once held by her mother), and destined for a special planting location in my private park here in Atlanta, Georgia. But as I reflected on the Coretta Scott King commemorative Rose, I also began to reflect on the woman. The woman, as leader, mother, wife, keeper of the King legacy flame. I decided I had to write something in honor of her, on this special day.
Jena Roscoe serves as First Senior Vice President and Chief of Government Affairs and Public Policy, Operation HOPE. Ms. Roscoe is the first Senior Director of the East Coast Regional Corporate Headquarters at Gallup in Washington, DC.
Jena Roscoe is in charge of the HOPE Office of Government Relations and Public Policy, which is a global responsibility. In this post Ms. Roscoe has managed the relationship of and between three Presidential Administrations, from (Democrat) President Bill Clinton to (Republican) President George W. Bush, to (Democrat) President Barack Obama.
During her tenture at Operation HOPE, Ms. Jena Roscoe has led or otherwise helped to marshall in almost every major national private/public partnership and national government agreement with HOPE over the past decade; including our HOPE Coalition America national agreement with FEMA, our national agreements with the FDIC, the Veterans Administration, the creation of the SBA Office of Entrepreneurship Education, and the Operation HOPE 5-year partnership with the FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE, amongst many others.
Ms. Roscoe manages John Hope Bryant's personal public policy portfolio, including his involvement as a Presidential Appointee to the U.S. CDFI Fund at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy, the U.S. President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability, the portfolio of more than 100 Local Financial Literacy Councils for the Subcommittee on the Underserved and Community Empowerment for the President's Council, under President Barack Obama.
Recently my Operation HOPE, Washington, DC and Operation HOPE, Maryland teams came together and had a very successful Banking on our Future volunteer event at Francis Scott Key Middle School in Silver Spring, MD. There were over 100 HOPE Corps volunteers present and involved, and included employees from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Women in Housing and Finance, Capital One, Fannie Mae, M&T Bank, Bank of India, BB&T Bank, Sandy Spring Bank, Bank of America, First Mariner Bank, FDIC, City First Bank, ETrade Bank, Wells Fargo, Bank of Georgetown, and FINRA.
A special thank you to my friend and financial dignity supporter, Maryland State Comptroller Peter Franchot, who teamed up with US Comptroller of the Currency Barry Wides to teach a Banking on Our Future financial literacy class. Maryland Comptroller Franchot and US Deputy Comptroller Wides also spoke to the volunteers about Franchot's mission to get each county in Maryland to adopt a graduation requirement for a financial literacy class in the senior year. Severak counties have already signed on to support this financial dignity leadership initiative of Comptroller Franchot. Operation HOPE certainly supports him.
A special acknowledgement to Jackie Starr, who is our Operation HOPE market president for the Washington, D.C. and Maryland.
Operation HOPE, Washington, DC and Operation HOPE, Maryland are part of the larger mission of Operation HOPE, which is now a leading global provider of financial literacy to financial dignity empowerment services for the underserved, the working poor and the struggling middle class.
With 2 million clients served, 20,000 HOPE Corps volunteers, and more than $1.5 billion in private capital directed into America's low wealth and underserved communities, creating thousands of homeowners, small business owners and entrepreneurs over the past 20 years, Operation HOPE is making a difference. But we cannot achieve our mission alone. We cannot seek to advance the final work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., eradicating poverty and achieving a measure of economic justice for all, alone.
Operation HOPE operates the HOPE Financial Dignity Center Atlanta at Ebenezer Church, located on the campus of the King Center and as the anchor tenant of the Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resource Complex. Martin Luther King, Sr, or "Daddy King" as he was called, co-pastored Ebenezer Church with his son Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement, and served on the board of a bank for 40-years; a little known fact. Daddy King was also focused on making free enterprise work for all, as his son was focused in the last years of his life on poverty eradication and economic justice.
The mission of Operation HOPE is civil rights to silver rights, or making free enterprise work for all.
WASHINGTON, April 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --The National Urban League's (www.nul.org) State of Black America report released today concludes that despite social and economic gains, the African-American equality gap with whites has changed little since 1963—the year of the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the height of the civil rights movement.
To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Great March, this year's State of Black America—Redeem the Dream: Jobs Rebuild America includes a 50-year retrospective analysis conducted through the lens of The Equality Index®. The report shows that while the African-American condition has improved, including achievements in educational attainment and employment, this progress has occurred largely within the Black community. Double-digit gains in education, employment and wealth contrast sharply with the single-digit gains made in those same areas compared to whites.
Report more from the National Urban League on the 2013 Report release here.
Global Dignity Country Chairs meet in Norway to discuss plans for making sixth anniversary the biggest event year to date
Oslo, Norway – April 25, 2013 – Global Dignity co-founders and Young Global Leaders Alumni HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway, Operation HOPE Founder John Hope Bryant, and Professor Pekka Himanen of the University of Art and Design Helsinki and Oxford University announced today that the Sixth Annual Global Dignity Day will be held on Wednesday, October 16, 2013.
More than 350,000 students, in more than 70 countries, will be taught the key principles of Global Dignityduring the event. Held annually on the third Wednesday in October, Global Dignity Day is celebrated worldwide with volunteers leading “A Course in Dignity” in classrooms.
The announcement comes during the Global Dignity Seminar held in Norway’s capital, where His Royal Highness The Crown Prince hosted a Global Dignity Country Chair meeting at Skaugum. The two-day conference included planning on how to improve and expand the reach and focus for the event.
Medical leaders to discuss national healthcare plan and responsible investments in health
ATLANTA – May 2, 2013 – Operation HOPE (HOPE), the financial literacy and empowerment nonprofit, will host U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjaminfor “Investing in Your Health,” a HOPE Forum exploring the impact of healthcare on the economy and solutions to improve the nation’s overall wellbeing. Dr. Valerie Montgomery Rice, dean and executive vice president of the Morehouse School of Medicine (MSM) will moderate the event on May 17 at the Operation HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Ebenezer in Atlanta.
The third installment on the HOPE Forum series in Atlanta, “Investing in Your Health,” will discuss the relationship between physical and fiscal health in America and how to invest wisely in personal health. The Forum will begin at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, May 17 at the HOPE Financial Dignity Center, Ebenezer, located at the Martin Luther King, Sr. Community Resource Complex at 101 Jackson Street, NE. Operation HOPE Founder, Chairman and CEO, John Hope Bryant will also participate in the Forum.
Dr. Benjamin has served as surgeon general since 2010. She is the former associate dean for Rural Health at the University Of South Alabama College Of Medicine in Mobile and past chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States. In 1995, she was the first physician under age 40 and the first African-American woman elected to the American Medical Association Board of Trustees. She has served as president of the American Medical Association Education and Research Foundation and chair of the AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs.
21 years ago, this day, May 5th, 2013, the bold vision of and for Operation HOPE was born in South Central Los Angeles, immediately following the Rodney King Riots of April 29th, 1992.
"Rainbows, after storms. You cannot have a rainbow without a storm first."
After the Rodney King verdict came down, so many things just went dark in the community I loved so much. The community I still love. But not all things were negative, in the days and weeks and months that followed.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters and her local leadership group, led by Brenda Shockley as I recall, stood up their vision of and for Community Build. Today, Congresswoman Waters serves on the financial services committee for Congress, continuing to push her agenda for her people.
Then City Counciman Mark Ridkey-Thomas, who today is an esteemed and accomplished lead member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. I fondly remember Supervisor Ridley-Thomas for so many reasons, but a couple stand out for me. Mark (as I respectfully call him as a friend) served on our first board of directors for Operation HOPE. I remember our parting conversation. It was our first letterhead. We were committed to "eradicating poverty across America," and Mark (Ridley-Thomas) wanted to eradicate poverty and empower people IN THE 8TH DISTRICT! We were both right, but Councilman Ridley-Thomas was more right than me. He was 100% focused on empowering and serving the people in the district he was elected to serve. This impresses me now, as much as it impressed me then. I was sad to see Ridley-Thomas leave our board back then, by I so respected "why" he did it. I also got the phrase "With HOPE," which has become my global signature sign-off statement on all correspondence, from Mr. Ridley-Thomas. Finally, back then I would say that Ridley-Thomas was the only sitting elected official who really knew and understood community development, community empowerment, and the power of financial dignity in one's life.
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.
Other key leaders join for critical dialogue about financial services for underserved communities on 50th Anniversary of Dr. King's Letter from Birmingham Jail
ATLANTA, April 16, 2013-- Operation HOPE will host its latest HOPE Forum on Tuesday, April 16th at the HOPE Financial Dignity Center, housed at the Martin Luther King Sr. Community Resources Complex at Ebenezer, led by the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency Thomas J. Curry, Atlanta City Council President Ceasar Mitchell and other key Atlanta and financial industry leaders. This discussion focused on how to develop financial services and effective new models to serve underserved, under-resourced and low-wealth communities in a new-era banking environment. To read the Comptroller's remarks, click here.
Curry assumed his role as administrator of national banks and chief officer of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in April 2012. He is responsible for the regulation and supervision of more than 2,000 financial institutions, managing over $10 trillion in assets, which represents more than 71 percent of the total commercial banking assets in the nation. The Comptroller also serves as a director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and NeighborWorks® America.
