In the month of June there is at least one orange "goodie" in every household in Luxembourg. This year: a foam finger, a keychain, a running T-shirt... and every year: one or several hats.

The day of the ING Night Marathon Luxembourg people wait expectant for our volunteers to start distributing the acclaimed gadgets. And once we start giving them away, they literally tear them from our hands! As you can imagine, this makes my team very happy; after all we spend quite a lot of time choosing and designing the goodies - so thank you all!

A couple of years ago we came up with the idea of producing even better goodies: promotional items we could sell to all our fans. But, of course, we're a bank not a retailer, so our goodies had to be sold at cost... or better yet: we could sell them at a small profit and donate all proceeds to an NGO. And voilà! the idea of the Express Shop was born.

Figuring out how to put the idea in place took longer than we expected. How would we display the items? How many different items did we need? Would people actually pay for ING stuff? So we did a test run during the 10th edition of the ING Night Marathon in 2015 with running related ING items. Guess how much money we raised for Medecins Sans Frontières? Over €2,000 in 1.5 days! And just to be really sure, we tested it again during the ING Route du vin last September where we managed to raise €1,230 for Unicef in support of Syrian refugee children.

Now we have an Express Shop in our Headquarters. Employees, clients and visitors alike can acquire the carefully designed ING items from the automated vending machine. It is our purpose to empower people to stay a step ahead in life and in business, so we try to design goodies that achieve that in some form. A mobile device charger; a notebook for great ideas; a travel mug; a handy shopping bag… And the profits go to Unicef as part of our partnership to help young Zambians via the “Power for Youth” programme to acquire the education and social skills required to manage everyday problems responsibly and independently.

My kids are big fans of our youth mascot, Sam, and they are looking forward to trying out the armbands in the pool this summer. And I’ll get an ING football for our next barbecue – it’s what everybody is talking about anyhow!

You too can show your love for ING and your support to Unicef! We look forward to receiving you at 52 route d’Esch in Luxembourg city.