ONE Banana, the Better Banana Company, through parent company AgroAmerica, has donated nearly $5 million dollars over the past three years to corporate social responsibility programs that benefit their employees, their families, and members of rural communities throughout Guatemala. The contributions are in keeping with ONE’s commitment to meeting the United Nations’ Millennium Goals of Nutrition and Child Mortality. Future planned initiatives include expansion of the Company’s Human Development Center (HDC), increased efforts to offer high quality low-cost medical care to the public, and providing free private education to the children of their workers in Retalhuleu, Guatemala.
The HDC complex currently consists of a state-of-the-art outpatient medical clinic, onsite research department, clinical laboratory, and a private school. The medical facility, which operates in partnership with University of Colorado Medical School, offers substantially affordable medical, dental, pediatric, maternal care, and pharmaceutical care to employees and residents of surrounding areas. The university’s relationship with ONE marks the school’s first permanent medical presence in a developing country.
Clinic staff includes a full-time Medical Director, at least one monthly rotating Colorado Med School Resident, a research physician, a pharmacist, seven full-time community outreach nurses, and two onsite nurses, among others. Offsite nurses provide free healthcare treatment to new and expectant mothers, perform free wellness checks on newborns, and offer no-cost childcare education to parents with children under the age of three.