1994

In 1994
John Hope Bryant founded the first in a national network of inner-city banking centers, called HOPE Centers, serving low-wealth communities. Located nationwide and soon Harlem, New York, HOPE Centers empower individuals by converting check cashing customers into banking customers, renters into homeowners, small business dreamers into small business owners, minimum wage workers into living wage workers, and the economically uneducated into the financially literate. In 2002, HOPE became the first non-profit in history to build a bank branch and sell it to a bank.  

John Hope Bryant participated in the 19th Japanese External Trade Organization, Export to Japan Program, as a guest of the Japanese Government.