Verde Creatives launches 'Rainbow Voices' campaign amid calls for trans advocacy beyond politics
Verde Creatives launches Rainbow Voices 2026, a Pride campaign centering transpinay and LGBTQIA+ advocacy in the Philippines under Bemz Benedito's leadership.
COMMUNITY
6/19/20262 min read
Verde Creatives, a Philippine cultural coordination and public relations firm, officially launches today its June 2026 digital Pride initiative — Rainbow Voices: Mga Mukha at Boses ng Bahaghari — kicking off with a press briefing held at Dark Roast Coffee House along Maginhawa Street in Diliman, Quezon City. The campaign rolls out across the company's official YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok platforms.
Led by Founding Managing Director Bemz Benedito, the initiative continues Verde Creatives' integration of socio-political advocacy into its creative programming — built in part on a human rights advocacy framework established with the Commission on Human Rights in late 2025.
For over three decades, Benedito has been a prominent voice for structural gender equality and LGBTQIA+ rights in the Philippines. Through Verde Creatives and her previous leadership of Ladlad Partylist and STRAP, she has consistently championed the dignity of transpinays and the broader LGBTQIA+ community. The campaign follows the agency's recent forum and film showing, Babae Kami: Lakas, Laban, at Likha, which drew on the pre-colonial legacy of the babaylan and asog to empower contemporary transpinay narratives.
Addressing speculation that her sustained advocacy serves as a precursor to a political run, Benedito was unequivocal.
"I don't have any plans of joining politics anymore; not even as a representative of any party-list. I have been doing this as an organic part of Verde Creatives' core advocacies, because our struggle for human dignity and structural equality cannot be reduced to an electoral tactic or a seat in Congress," she said.
The statement marks a deliberate turn from her earlier trajectory as the primary congressional nominee for Ang Ladlad in the 2010 and 2013 midterm elections. Benedito's pivot toward creative corporate responsibility and cultural coordination signals a broader strategic shift — one that locates meaningful political agency outside the legislative arena.
"The victory of our movement will be secured when our most vulnerable masses — the working-class transgender individuals, the impoverished service workers, and the neglected elder queer citizens — are protected from both physical violence and economic erasure in their daily lives," Benedito said.
As Verde Creatives marks its ninth year in the industry, Benedito and her team continue to leverage media representation and creative programming to deliver direct support to the most marginalized sectors of the LGBTQIA+ community — prioritizing grassroots empowerment over legislative validation in what the agency describes as an increasingly hostile political climate.
