A fund offering investors 2 per cent returns on ethical, socially responsible investment projects has won backing from The Guardian and AAA.

Boston, MA, USA, March 06, 2012 — A fund offering investors 2 per cent returns on ethical, socially responsible investment projects has won backing from The Guardian and Alternative Asset Analysis (AAA).

The newspaper and the alternative investment advocacy group are both supporting the Oikocredit investment fund, which is based in the Netherlands and provides small loans to help people living in developing countries. A recent article in the broadsheet explained that Oikocredit was first launched as a faith-based fund back in 1975, but that its roots do not affect the investment decisions it makes.

The fund started off facilitating churches’ loans to marginalised people in developing countries. It now offers “life changing” loans to projects and people in countries including Uganda and the Ivory Coast. One of the projects it has helped is the Cocovico women’s market, which was set up in 2008 by a group of village women in order to help them sell their produce without paying the fees charged by other markets.

Investors can expect a modest annual return a well as the knowledge that their cash is helping to change lives of vulnerable people all over the world. AAA’s analysis partner, Anthony Johnson said, “We fully support these kinds of small-scale loan projects in the developing world as the model has worked so well for so many people.”

“Many entrepreneurs and small businesses owners in less economically and politically sound countries have no access to finance at all, and therefore, their ideas and business often fall at the first hurdle. Impact investing project such as these truly create a win-win situation.”

AAA is an advocacy and research organisation that promotes ethical and alternative investments of many kinds. Not least investment in forestry as both a profitable and ethically sound option. An example is the sustainable plantation projects run by Greenwood Management in Brazil.

About Alternative Asset Analysis:
The remit of Alternative Asset Analysis is to analyse and provide news on the global performance of a wide range of alternative asset classes including, but not restricted to, commodities, real estate, forestry, foreign exchange, hedge funds, private equity and venture capital.

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