Our Values
Sustainable development and agriculture are key themes in the work carried out by Banana hill. For development to be sustainable, equality is an important consideration. Equal opportunities, equal access and empowerment are therefore core values for us. The quest for equal opportunities inspires our work and makes us focus our activities on the needs of disadvantaged groups, on gender issues and poverty alleviation. This quest is also the organising principle behind the Banana hill company which aims for a balance in gender and South/North experience in its partners.
Banana hill works for "Farmer-led development", a participatory and bottom-up approach to development that affects the people who best understand their needs and the systems in which they live. However, this does not mean that we think that farmers exclusively hold appropriate knowledge, nor do we exclude all other stakeholders from our work.
Equal access to information is still a dream despite the information revolution. Many people - particularly in developing countries - do not have access to electronic communications. That is why we find it important to contribute to quality printed information. At the same time, electronic communications cannot be ignored. However, too much electronic communication today relies on the latest and fastest technology. Many companies do not realise that their websites are not accessible to millions of users. We at Banana hill find the message, and therefore accessibility and usability, more important than a flashy design.
Even when information is available, it may not be accessible because it is conveyed in an incomprehensible technical language or in a foreign language. In our training, writing, editing and translation services, we emphasise clear communication and work hard to make even the most jargon-filled concepts understandable.
Empowerment is not just an end-product, but must be part of the process. Our work on evaluations, assessments, research projects, lectures and training programmes therefore focuses on participatory approaches.
Banana hill's values do not only apply to groups of people, but also relate to the environment - working with nature as equal partners, and not against it. This calls for an organic/holistic approach to agriculture and the relationships involved in it, rather than simply a strict adherence to organic standards. Biodiversity and low-external-input agriculture are also important concepts to us.