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The High Social Impact Investments (HSII) program channels investment capital to nonprofit organizations with the goal of ending poverty through investment. Certain Calvert funds invest up to one to three percent of assets in this program, depending on the fund.1
Calvert invests in Community Investment Notes administered by the Calvert Social Investment Foundation (Calvert Foundation). The Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) that allows individuals and institutions to invest in a low-income communities while benefiting from a professionally managed portfolio with security enhancements, diversification, rigorous due diligence, and ongoing monitoring of investments.
As of March 31, 2006, the Calvert Social Investment Fund had invested approximately $18 million invested in this program domestically and abroad. In addition, Calvert had $1.7 million directly invested in community development bank CDs.
The HSII program invests in five different community development lending areas:
- Affordable Housing helps disadvantaged families find a place to call home. Many of the local affordable housing organizations also provide innovative social services to local residents.
- Microcredit extends credit to low-income individuals (usually women) seeking to start or expand their small businesses, increase their income, and feed their families. Experience has proven that even very small loans, when directed to a committed group of individual borrowers, can boost local living standards.
- Community Facilities loans provide critical funds to local non-profits and cooperatives, supporting healthcare, education, childcare, and many other core needs in troubled communities.
- Small Business Loans help people in low-income communities to start or strengthen their own businesses, revitalizing local economies.
- Social Innovation Capital finances cutting-edge programs that support social enterprise development, fair trade farmers, innovations that protect the environment, and promote independent media.
Individuals or institutions can invest in Community Investment Notes. For more information about the Notes, please call the Calvert Foundation at 800.248.0337 or visit www.calvertfoundation.org.
Success Stories:
Mercy Loan Fund - Supporting essential community services
Fendia Laurent gave birth to a baby girl six months before she was supposed to graduate from high school. Homeless and a recent high school drop out, she found shelter on a friend's couch with her baby, Sarabean. She was struggling with the decision of what do with herself or her daughter, until she found out about Hope House. Hope House is a place that provides housing, education, training, and other resources for young mothers. Fendia moved in when her daughter was only two weeks old.
Hope House expanded in 2005, thanks to the help of loan capital from the Calvert Foundation to Mercy Loan Fund (MLF). MLF's subsequent loan to Hope House was used to relocate and renovate a donated home.
Today, Fendia is 19 and going to nursing school. She credits many of her accomplishments to Hope House. Teen mothers like Fendia are there to learn how to be good parents, finish their education, and find a better life for their children. Thanks to the help of MLF, more teenagers like Fendia will find a place to stay at Hope House.
Calvert Foundation helps to finance over 1600 non-profit facilities annually through its partnerships with leading nonprofits across the US, providing affordable capital that finances essential services like daycare centers, nursing homes, and community facilities like Hope House.
Peoples' Self-Help Housing - Providing affordable housing for farm workers
Alfonso and his granddaughter Areli are proud residents of Los Adobes de Maria II, a farm worker community in Santa Maria, California, administered by Peoples' Self-Help Housing (PSHH). Alfonso, like many of his fellow farm workers, had suffered due to a low supply of affordable housing options in the area. In these cases, families often find themselves living in cramped conditions, in houses that are in unsafe areas, posing a threat to the children.
Los Adobes de Maria II is the second phase of a rental complex for farm worker families. The townhomes feature a community meeting space with kitchen, health screening and treatment facility, learning center (with onsite educator), a soccer field and basketball court. The development has been hailed as a model solution to address the lack of affordable housing for farm workers and their families. Calvert Foundation helps to build or refurbish over 1500 housing units annually through partnerships with leading nonprofit developers like PSHH, in order to provide low-income families with safe, decent, affordable housing.
FINCA International - Helping promote small businesses around the world
Microloans of $100 or less are essential for small entrepreneurs like Akmatova, who sells headgear in Kyrgyzstan. She used this loan to increase inventory, raising her profits and enabling her to rent a permanent stall. These small loans provide a critical base of support to hardworking business owners like Akmatova, enabling them to increase their savings, and improve the health and education of their families.
Calvert Foundation partners with leading microcredit institutions like FINCA International in sixty countries around the world, channeling millions of dollars in affordable credit that is at work helping thousands of hardworking people around the world to lift themselves out of poverty.
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