Celebrating Latinx Heritage Month in Style

The month of September 15th – October 15th is traditionally recognized as Hispanic Heritage Month—a time when most Latin American countries celebrate their independence days. Throughout the month, the celebration of Latin culture has become a valuable opportunity to inspire the next generation of Latinx leaders and celebrate the rich culture and diversity of the many communities they represent. 
  
We partnered with our Equality & Belonging Group, HOLA@Gap Inc., to adopt the term “Latinx” to acknowledge our gender-neutral and non-binary community, as well as indigenous, Brazilian, and other non-Spanish speaking communities.  We recognize that no single word can summarize the vastness represented within this community and while some prefer to use Hispanic, Chicano, Latino, Latina, Latine, we embrace them all with respect of the rich heritage and expression of this culture.    

In celebration of all that Latinx encompasses, we created a video highlighting what Latinx means for some of our employees:   

Here are some ways our different Latinx employee and community events came to life throughout the month: 

Old Navy Project WE x Fifteen Percent Pledge 

Old Navy kicked-off the the Project WE x Fifteen Percent Pledge collection with tees by Brazilian artist and illustrator Camila Rosa, celebrating her community’s strength, family, and heritage.      

Our teams—along with our friends from the Fifteen Percent Pledge—were stoked to experience the new display dedicated to this special collaboration in an Old Navy New York City store.    

The Project WE x Fifteen Percent Pledge collection includes graphic tees designed by diverse artists to imagine a more inclusive world through art—and marks the first product collaboration for the Pledge. Plus, in honor of the series, Old Navy is donating $500K to the Pledge. 

Create With Audacity Design Sprint 

In preparation for Latinx Heritage Month, we partnered with the Lower East Side Girls Club to get our craft on. The community activation, co-hosted by Gap Inc.’s Equality & Belonging team and Create With Audacity designers, took over the club’s art studio and ignited the creative spirits of high school and first-year college students.  

The girls elevated product like jean jackets, baseball caps, and totes, guided by designers from Old Navy, Gap, and Athleta. In 90 jam-packed minutes: Swatches were cut. Patches were ironed. Beads were glued. Paint was applied. But most importantly, big impressions were left on both sides of the aisle. Read what our designers had to say about the experience here. 

Spanish-Language Pilot 

We are always looking for candidates to join our Distribution Center teams and help us deliver outstanding product to our customers – especially during the holiday peak season. In celebration of Latinx Heritage Month, we spoke to Richard Nunez, Operations Manager in our Fishkill, NY location, who was part of the team who set out to attract candidates that spoke Spanish as their primary language.  

Reimagining our hiring process with an inclusive lens, they created a more inviting environment for Spanish speakers by translating all materials and signage, ensuring that bilingual leaders were always on the floor, and holding roundtable discussions with Spanish-speaking new hires. With strong retention, performance and referral rates, the ESL Hiring Pilot was a success and is now an ongoing program at our Fishkill campus – one that we plan to expand to our distribution centers across the country. 

 

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