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Summit Explores Financial Literacy as a Business Case to Address Economic Crisis; Speakers from Six Continents of the Global Financial Community Confirmed

Operation HOPE (HOPE), America's leading nonprofit social investment banking and financial literacy empowerment organization, announced today that seven plenary sessions will be held at the first Global Financial Literacy Summit at the Town Hall Education Arts & Recreation (THEARC) in southeast Washington, D.C., on June 17, 2009. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chair Sheila Bair will deliver keynote addresses. More than 45 national and international speakers from six continents are slated to participate.

The summit is being launched in response to the global economic crisis, the highest U.S. unemployment rate in 25 years (9.4 percent), a record low housing construction rate (down 12.8 percent), and a loss of consumer and market confidence due to deteriorating personal finances.

Against the backdrop of the current global economic roller-coaster, HOPE will make the case that financial literacy is a new civil right, and the first global “silver right.” Based on the American model, a global economy must be anchored by the consumer. Understanding the “language of money” is the first step to empowering the average person, a fundamental tool which enables consumers to make better choices about their future, protecting both themselves and their families.

Participants at the Global Financial Literacy Summit will explore financial literacy as a business case to address and drill-down on the economic crisis during the following seven plenary sessions:

1. Financial literacy, banking the unbanked from third world poor to first world underserved.

a. Financial literacy and a bank account for all.

b. The new freedom going from unbanked to banked.

2. Financial literacy and the education system.

a. Empowering K-12 education.

b. Tackling the high school drop-out epidemic.

c. Creating a path from cradle to college.

d. Historically black colleges and universities.

3. Financial literacy empowerment.

a. The $9 billion opportunity of the Earned Income Tax Credit in the U.S.

4. Financial literacy and lending that works

5. Financial literacy and progressive public policy.

a. Legislative leadership in the United States and around the world.

b. The work of the non-partisan U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Literacy.

6. Financial literacy and nurturing a generation of entrepreneurship.

7. Financial literacy and the business case.

a. Fusing financial literacy into financial products and services.

b. Embedding financial literacy into human resource activities, resources and offerings.

What:

          Global Financial Literacy Summit:
Making a Business Case for Financial Literacy, Post-Crisis

Who:

Ben Bernanke, U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman
Sheila Bair, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC)
Ambassador Andrew Young, HOPE Global Spokesman
John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Operation HOPE, Inc.
45 speakers representing 6 continents

When:

7:30am- 5:00pm, June 17, 2009

Where:

THEARC
1901 Mississippi Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20020

Summit sponsors include Wal-Mart, JP Morgan Chase & Co., The Coca Cola Company, The Charles Schwab Foundation, and CIT. Summit work partners include the Milken Institute, The American Banker, and America’s Promise Alliance.

About Operation HOPE, Inc.

Operation HOPE is America's leading nonprofit social investment banking and financial literacy empowerment organization. With more than 400 private sector partners, 1500 nonprofit organizations and schools, and 100 government partners in 30 major U.S. cities as well as South Africa, HOPE has raised more than $400 million in its pursuit of educating, assisting and inspiring the next generation of global stakeholders. Through international initiatives and its three principal programs, Banking on Our Future (teaching school children about money), HOPE Coalition America (Mortgage HOPE Crisis Hotline, 1-888-388-HOPE, financial emergency preparedness and disaster relief), and Walk-In HOPE Centers (loans, bill pay, computer literacy, understanding banking principles), Operation HOPE has assumed the responsibility of piloting the “Silver Rights Movement” towards making free enterprise and capitalism relevant to all underserved communities.

For more about the summit or to register, visit www.operationhope.org/summit.

About THEARC:

Since its opening in 2005, Town Hall Education, Arts and Recreation Campus – THEARC – has become a national prototype combining social, cultural and health services. It is a $27 million, 110,000 square foot center on 16.5 acres of land in Southeast Washington, DC, providing a daily safe haven for the children and adults it serves, with a wide range of arts, educational, recreational, and health programs and services, in addition to a 365-seat theater, a regulation size gymnasium, computer lab, art gallery, a full-service pediatric clinic, and state-of-the-art music and dance studios. Further information is available at www.thearcdc.org.

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