John Hope Bryant

Solving Poverty: Financial Illiteracy Is Everywhere -- Rich and Broke -- Middle and Broke -- We're All Broke

Financial literacy may not be a sexy topic, but financial illiteracy is literally everywhere. And in this new economic age we all live in today, it's wrecking lives, hopes and dreams both large and small.

The number one cause of divorce, is money.
The number one reason for domestic abuse, is money.
The number one reason why police get injured on the job is not car chases or shootouts, but domestic abuse calls. 
The number one reason why minorities (and increasingly mainstream America too) drop out of college is not grades or GPA, but money.
The number one cause for heart disease is stress, so says the American Heart Association. The number one reason for stress – money.

Financial illiteracy is no longer the thing we assign to the so-called poor, and those without a college degree, or a degree of material success.  It is something that now effects and impacts all of us, and we need to do something about it. Now.  But before we put out the urgent call to our elected officials, we need to also look at ourselves, our own lives, and our own decisions. 

Operation HOPE, and our Banking on Our Future Youth Financial Literacy to Financial Dignity Movement

What Operation HOPE does differently around youth financial education is really our delivery approach, which is right brain-left brain, or behavioral economics first.  Operation HOPE has teed up the largest urban delivery system for financial literacy education, and with it financial dignity empowerment, in the country. Increasingly, other countries as well.

Today, Operation HOPE and our award-winning Banking on Our Future program is the largest youth urban delivery system in American for financial literacy education and financial dignity empwerment tools, programs and services.

John Hope Bryant, founder, Operation HOPE

 

Related articles

Operation HOPE and Financial Literacy Featured in New Book: Practicing Sustainability

President's Advisory Council on Financial Capability Releases Final Report

Saluting Operation HOPE's Own Mary Hagerty-Ehrsam

CNN Highlights Operation HOPE, Banking on Our Future and the Power of Financial Literacy on Inner-City Decision Making

A Personal Letter from Operation HOPE Founder, Chairman, and CEO John Hope Bryant and Ambassador Andrew Young

Operation HOPE is "the private banker to the working poor, the underclass, and the struggling middle-class," and the impact of our work can be felt on-the-ground, everywhere we operate.  Our mission is 'silver rights,' or making free enterprise and capitalism work for all.  Financial literacy is the tool, financial dignity is the goal and financial inclusion is the way. 

2012 marked new heights for HOPE's silver rights movement as it continued to reach out and empower underserved populations in new and innovative ways. HOPE divisions currently serving the community include:

 

• Banking on Our Future, focused on keeping the most at-risk youth from repeating the cycles of poverty and despair that has trapped so many in their families and communities by teaching them basic financial literacy, or what we call "the global language of money." 

 

• HOPE Business-In-A-Box/Gallup-HOPE Index, focused on inspiring a generation of young people to become future American assets of economic energy, small business and entrepreneurship.

 

• HOPE Financial Dignity Centers, including our newest HOPE Financial Dignity Center at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr''s Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, Georgia, are where we approve clients day one, subject to the resolution of their primary denial factors, and raise credit scores on average 120 points over 18 months of active counseling. We call it the 700 Credit Scores Communities Initiative.  The HOPE Center at Ebenezer marks our 11th HOPE Center across the nation, and is the proud anchor for the new Martin Luther King. Sr. Community Resource Complex next to Ebenezer Church.  Most people know that Daddy King, as he was lovingly called, co-pastored Ebenezer Church with his son, Dr. King, but what they don't know is that Daddy King served on the board of a bank for 40 years.  Even more than 50 years ago, the King legacy was alive with civil rights, and silver rights empowerment, too. A special thank you to our HOPE Center signature partners, including Bank of the West and Union Bank on the west coast, E*TRADE FINANCIAL in New York City and Washington, DC, and at Ebenezer in Atlanta, FINANCIAL SERVICES ROUNDTABLE members SunTrust Bank, State Farm Insurance, LPL Financial/NestWise, Wells Fargo Bank,MasterCard, and BMO Harris Bank, along with supporting partners including the Coca-Cola Company,Kaplan University, Equifax, the United Way of Greater Atlanta, amongst others.

 

• HOPE Coalition America, which is the national partner with FEMA around emergency financial disaster preparedness, response and recovery, or the "economic Red Cross" for the nation.  HCA responded to, and served, more than 200,000 survivors following Hurricane Katrina, and we are responding to Hurricane Sandy now. 

 

• HOPE Government Relations & Public Policy, and HOPE Forums, which both advance responsible public policy and help to shape, engaged public opinion.  The recent HOPE Global Financial Dignity Summitfeaturing U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, with more than 1,500 delegates from 30 countries, covered by 50 major media outlets, is but one example of our focus here.

Read the complete personal letter on the HOPE Blog here.

Operation HOPE's Silver Rights Empowerment 'Software' Making A Difference in Saudi Arabia

 

• 
• 
• 

This week our strategic partners in Saudi Arabia, SEDCO Holdings, introduced Riyali, our localized version of Banking on Our Future, College Edition, into course presentations at King Abdul Aziz University.

The Riyali Progrm was extremely well reeived by the students and faculty alike, and the SEDCO Holdings team, and SEDCO Ambassadors (their volunteer corps) deserve credit for making this vision of 'silver rights' empowerment real to and for the people of Saudi Arabia.

More to come. Much more...

 

 

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 though leader represented by the Bright Sight Group for public speaking. 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.

WANTED: A New Revolution of 100 Million Youth in the Middle East

I had just returned from the Middle East on the day prior to the devastating terrorist act of September 11th, 2012, in Libya.  I was visiting Saudi Arabia, and experiencing almost the total opposite engagement with leaders looking toward in the region.  Last week in Libya, and thereafter other places throughout the Middle East region, chose to curse the darkness.  I experienced leaders who decided to light candles, towards a brighter future.

I came to Saudi Arabia with a simple message -- in the MENA Region (Middle East and North Africa) you have a population that will be 60% under the age of 25 by 2020, and in Saudi Arabia this is already the case.  This is either an incredible opportunity, or it is a problem on a scale unparalleled in modern human history.  Just that simple, and their choice.  Not mine.  Theirs.  The leaders I had the opportunity of spending time with, from one part of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to the next, and from some of the wealthiest enclaves to some of the poorest communities, were all unified in yes, recognizing the problem, but more so focusing on the untapped opportunity (of the region's growing youth population).

The MENA region is anticipated to have a population of more than 180 million by 2010, and a need for 100 million jobs.  100 million.  A doubling or more of the current jobs calendar in the region, basically.  And there is no greater national -- no global security threat than a region that is majority youth, under the age of 25, who are exposed to the outside world and those possibilities and opportunities (the Internet, social media, etc), with too much time on their hands, no jobs, even fewer entrepreneurial opportunities, and increasingly without hope.  The most dangerous person in the world, is a person with no hope.

Operation HOPE, Saudi Arabia Partnership Office and SEDCO Holdings in the News

John Hope Bryant Open Letter to Leaders, August, 2012

 

                                                                                                                            August 16, 2012

 

An Open Letter to Leaders

For 20 years Operation HOPE has been about progress for the underserved here in America and around the world.  Now, on our 20th anniversary in 2012, we have hit the internal and external 'reset' button with respect to our strategic focus, our approach, operations, and even the results we seek for those we serve.  What comes next sets us up for the next 20 years. 

For 20 years HOPE was structured around a triangle approach to leadership, where my senior leadership team and I issued directives and the rest of the organization responded, or worse, simply waited for direction.  This approach was actually appropriate for a start-up trying to forge and frame its culture and way of operating.  In June, 2012, we completed an internal restructure around a diamond approach to leadership, where my senior team and I are at the bottom of the triangle, supporting our newly minted group of top-line division presidents, portfolio leaders, local CEOs, market presidents and others who now take 'ownership' of the HOPE brand wherever they live, work and operate.  Accordingly, it is with great pleasure that I announce the following promotions and key appointments:

More Advice to College Students

1. Do what you are passionate about. You will stink at everything else.
2. Match your passion with a job description, and then pick your major in response to that match. 
3. Remember that college is your pre-paid R&D for life. Don't waste it at parties you don't even remember. 
4. College is about the only time a grown man is still considered 'cute and adorable' -- take advantage of how weak kneed every successful adult is around you by asking for something meaningful -- like a business internship at their company for the summer. 
5. Have more questions than answers. God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen more than you talk. You can be smarty pants later. 

From Reuters: Young Bucks - Real world advice for college freshmen

I am pleased to contribute to the following article for college students.

Wed Aug 8, 2012 7:59pm IST

By Lauren Young
    NEW YORK, Aug 8 (Reuters) - More than 3 million students
will start college this fall. What sage advice would you offer
someone stepping onto campus for the first time?
    Here are recommendations from some former freshmen with
valuable experiences to share.
       
    Mary Schapiro, commissioner of the U.S. Securities &
Exchange Commission. 
    Age: 57
    1977 graduate of Franklin & Marshall College 
    My daughter is about to start college. I'm encouraging her
to take lots of history, anthropology - which is what I majored
in - and economics. These are all great foundational disciplines
for almost anything you want to do. History, because it truly
does repeat itself, and there's so much to learn from how
leaders have responded to crises throughout history.
Anthropology because it helps you understand what motivates
people, how they make decisions, and what they value. And
economics because it's just critical to policymaking and
decision making, at the government level as well as at the
individual level.
    
    Liz Lange, fashion designer
    Age: 44
    1990 graduate of Brown University
    Realize what a gift college is. You are still so young.
Don't rush it by thinking you need to have everything all
figured out. You have years for that. 
    Take this time to take the courses that really interest you,
to learn as much as you can. You may never again in your life
have a four-year period when all that is asked of you is to
learn. 
    Get an on-campus job or even start a business while in
college. College is a great time to pursue entrepreneurial
activities, if the spirit moves you.   
    

Read the complete story here on Reuters.

 

Operation HOPE at 20: A Look at Who We IMPACT

 

A special thank you to Rod McGrew, global chief of brand for Operation HOPE, for producing this summary of Operation HOPE's impact in the lives of people.  Real people. Our clients. The more than 1.5M we have served over the last 20 years.