I was exceedingly proud to travel to the west coast on yesterday to participate in an intimate conversation with community and local non-profit leaders around the coming HOPE Commitment by Operation HOPE and the San Francisco 49ers organization to stand up a HOPE Inside location, serving the San Francisco Bay Area!
Operation HOPE had previously won a grant from the NFL for their Inspire Change Initiative. The San Francisco 49ers are the first NFL team to step forward with a matching grant on the local level, focused on economic empowerment and economic uplift for the people and communities surrounding the stadium.
Team Principal Jed York has also enthusiastically agreed to join the Global Board of Directors for the organization I founded 27 years ago, Operation HOPE.
Jed York and I dreamed up this vision for transformation and change at the local level during our time together on stage and post at our HOPE Global Forum 2019, May 29-31, in Atlanta, Georgia. There we discussed the understandable frustration of NFL players who often leave challenged neighborhoods for a dream life of professional sports —- but want to see their childhood neighborhoods to have a similar shots as aspirational success and uplift, as they have. Such is partly the inspiration behind the NFL ‘Inspire Change’ Initiative.
Through a national grant from the NFL, the League has provided resources and encouragement for Operation HOPE and others to ‘lean in.’ And lean in, we are. Operation HOPE has 150 HOPE Inside locations nationwide, and thanks to a matching grant at the local level from San Francisco 49ers and team owner Jed York, we will soon be serving the San Francisco/Bay Area as well.
This will be our fourth HOPE Inside location in total serving the broader Bay Area community. This commitment builds on our growing network of HOPE Inside locations in the Bay Area, which was originally inspired by partner Bank of the West, and our HOPE Inside location at the Fruitvale Center there.
The 49er’s supported HOPE Inside location will work with and support local efforts right alongside a network of local nonprofit organizations, many of which were present for the private briefing this week.
The dedicated HOPE Financial Coach at our HOPE Inside there will address issues from small business and entrepreneurship, to homeownership and preparing yourself for the job market, to our HOPE 700 Credit Score Communities Program, and much more. It’s all about local economic empowerment and building an individual’s financial resiliency, from the inside out.
Operation HOPE is a 4-Star Navigator awarded organization, placing it in the top quartile of all nonprofit organizations nationwide.
The best is yet to come, so stand by for more here.
Let’s go…
John Hope Bryant, Founder