Hello everyone! This is Ecce Homo’s latest newsletter that aims at keeping our friends and customers posted on the recent activities of our CSR program, more specifically the ones that took place during the last year! Let us kindly remind you that Ecce Homo takes pride in its Corporate Social Responsibility program deeply rooted at the core of our corporate identity as it has always been one of the key motivations behind this project and its constant driving force. We think of our CSR as a way of queering the business-as-usual way of doing business (pun intended, oh yes!) especially when it comes to the vast majority of queer underwear brands that are complicit in capitalizing on queer baiting and pink capitalism. Beyond our queer fashion politics mirrored in our designs, marketing material, and customer services that speak -more or less- for themselves, our CSR program is both extended and multifaceted. 

We continue to take the environmental impact of our production process seriously, and we go to great lengths to reduce our environmental footprint throughout our product design and development, and worldwide distribution, while supporting our community, the LGBTIQ+ community of Europe, and our members, most of them proud members of the latter, through inclusive and fair labor practices. On top of that, we keep on thinking in an intersectional way regarding the visual representations we put out there by both supporting the Free the Nipple movement and by striving to be as inclusive as possible in terms of gender expression, able-bodiedness, body type, and race. As a matter of fact, our latest collections, Xpose and Natura, are living proof of these social principles and business standards. 

Furthermore, we were very happy that Positive Voice, the Greek Association of People Living with HIV, has joined our CSR family that now counts five community partners in total, staying this way faithful to our long-lasting and substantial commitment to supporting the LGBTIQ+ community all around Europe. But that’s not the end of the story! We have initiated a brand-new branch of collaboration with Positive Voice in the context of our well-established community partnership. Ecce Homo has issued an exclusive global discount code offered to their employees, members, and volunteers as a purchasing incentive that will reduce the price of any order from our e-shop by 25%. This means that this discount will run in parallel with but independently of the ad hoc sales that we run from time to time. Soon enough, we are going to issue similar discount codes for those of our community allies that our customers choose to support with their purchases the least in order to contribute more to their invaluable work in addition to the direct financial support we already provide but which in these cases is relatively low, as the following pie chart shows. 

Along with the financial and symbolic support we provide to our community partners, we continue to follow through with a number of Inhouse Initiatives that were organized either exclusively by Ecce Homo, or in close collaboration with the LGBTIQ+ organizations-members of our CSR family. Among these initiatives, the twin projects of manufacturing and distributing free face masks and undergarments to LGBTIQ+ sex workers in Thessaloniki, Greece in collaboration with Positive Voice and to LGBTIQ+ refugees in Athens, Greece with the help of Emantes stand out. Having said that, we continue supporting our community allies in the two following ways: 

 On the one hand, Ecce Home takes up the role of media sponsor on behalf of these queer organizations by spreading via its social media and blog their message. To be precise, our Twitter account has posted more than 300 tweets only during the last year especially dedicated to this end. Follow us so you won’t miss a tweet! 

On the other hand, as you already know, 5% of the price of each purchase (before VAT) is donated by Ecce Homo to one organization of customers’ choosing. Thus, the consumer chooses an organization from a list of ones of different subject matters across Europe in an attempt to cover as many issues -that the queer community in its diversity faces- as possible. We want to make it perfectly clear that this amount does not fall on our customers in any way, and it is rather withheld from the firm’s income. For the sake of transparency, the thank you posts by our community partners follow. We would like to wholeheartedly thank them in turn for the indispensable work they do with the queer communities in Greece, Bulgaria, and the UK and for providing us with the opportunity to be a fellow passenger on their journey. 

In addition, keep in mind that our rich and engaging blog is part of our CSR program and the genuine voice of Ecce Homo in civil society. Up until now, more than 40 articles have been written covering a wide range of topics across the globe in terms of either education, commentary, social critique, or reporting. For example, Ecce Homo took a clear stance on a series of controversial and highly debated issues such as the banning of conversion therapies in the UK, the recent Greek legal reform regarding intersex rights and IGM, the ongoing Ukraine war and its masculinist geopolitics, and the rise of TERFs within the feminist movement, to name but a few. Among our more informative articles, one can find the History of Queer blog series and many other diverse history bits on specific issues, such as the history of jockstraps and Compton’s cafeteria riots. Last but not least, Ecce Homo has joined the voices of those advocating gay marriage and family equality in Greece complemented by a special photo shooting. 

Thank you so much for your support without which this CSR program wouldn’t be possible! Stay tuned to our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and don’t forget to #WearYourTrueColors!