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 Operation HOPE has partnerships with 300 of the world's largest financial company's and major companies, 200 non-profits, 700 schools, and 100 bipartisan governmental agencies. Founder, Chairman and CEO John Hope Bryant says HOPE is into the conversion business: "converting check cashing customers into banking customers, converting renters into home owners, converting small business dreamers into small business owners and entrepreneurs, and converting minimum wage workers into living wage workers with new job skills." Operation HOPE has resources in twenty-five of the largest USA cities and will soon be in Africa.
The LA Riots in 1992 inspired John to start Operation HOPE. With a $60,000 loan from company and a vision to change the world, John set out on his goal to eradicate the world of poverty. Part of his motivation was guilt for not showing up in his own community to help. After the riots, Bryant organized a Bankers Bus Tour to take financiers through the effected area. The result was the funding of the loans to rebuild businesses. Through Operation HOPE, John desires to enrich the spirit of people, give them "a hand up not a handout". He wants to use education as the ultimate poverty eradication tool. As John says, "when you know better you tend to do better", He wants to break the back of poverty.
He realized that people need a mechanism for help so John coined the term the "Silver Rights Movement."
Through this movement, he wants to help make capitalism and the free enterprise system work for the poor. John says, "There is a difference between being broke and being poor. Being broke is a temporary economic condition, but being poor is a disabling frame of mind and a depressed condition of the spirit, and we must vow to never, ever be poor again."
John also believes the more people give, the more then get. "As you help others you heal yourself," Bryant says. "You forget about your troubles, problems, and hang ups. No body wakes up in the morning and starts a cancer foundation. You either lost someone or had cancer yourself." Bryant believes that there are rainbow after storms. Millions of lives have been saved because someone decided to turn personal tragedy into triumph to help someone else.
Visit Operation Hope for more information.
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