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About Us
The focus of Banana IT is You. We don’t sell you what we think you want and then walk away, we work with you to achieve your aims and objectives, staying with you, supporting, enabling and empowering you. Whatever your needs we can build a bespoke support package for you.
Why Banana?
Why Banana?
Banana IT Solutions founder Derek White is an enthusiastic IT Consultant and Trainer with strong communication and organisational skills gained in Charity and Commercial IT roles. Derek worked for the Fairtrade Foundation for over nine years and saw the impact that Fairtrade can have, which increased his conviction that we can all do something to empower and enable others to be the best they can be.
As IT Officer, his paid role in Fairtrade was ensuring that colleagues had sufficient IT resources to enable them to fulfil their objectives, whether that was fixing a jammed printer, resolving email issues, configuring proprietary software or giving support and advice on Microsoft Office products. His driving belief was that while his colleagues may have seen him ‘fixing a printer’, he was actually putting a Fairtrade product on a supermarket shelf, or enabling a producer to overcome climate change.
He also developed another additional fun role at Fairtrade, that of ‘Banana Man’. One of the many exciting things about working at Fairtrade was meeting with and getting involved in the Campaigns. During his time at Fairtrade, he started volunteering to turn up in a Banana suit as a way of promoting a campaign. There are now a bunch of Banana’s across the Fairtrade Movement and many of his activities are available elsewhere on the website.
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With his work history covering different aspects of providing Support and Customer Service, whether (working backwards) prior to the Fairtrade Foundation; seven years in IT Support for a Banking and Insurance Software provider, as Project Manager of a Community Furniture Recycling Charity or as a Quantity Surveyor working with site support and infrastructure contractors, he has gained a wealth of experience in working with and encouraging people to reach their potential.
“That desire to enable and empower people has flourished into a passion to become an IT Consultant working freelance across the commercial, third sector and individual user ‘scape’. This is exemplified by the banana. To paraphrase the quote below from the Fairtrade Foundation website, my hope for Banana IT Solutions is that it will become the favourite IT Support organisation in a client’s business ‘basket’ and that it will become the staple ‘go to’ place for support for ‘millions’ of people!“
Bananas are the favourite fruit in our grocery basket and are grown by millions of small-scale farmers and plantation workers in tropical regions. They are the staple food for millions of people in developing countries.
- Fairtrade Foundation: Banana Farmers and Workers
