The Hungarian Cyclists’ Club started its campaign implementation in Zugló, a residential district of Budapest with a lot of small, traditional shops. Our aim is to reestablish a good relationship among shopkeepers and their clients – people living and working in the area – who recently tend to do their shopping in remote shopping malls, by car. The campaign, called “Helyben vedd meg!” (“Buy local!”) encourages participants to discover shops (groceries, pet shops, florists or others) and services (hairdressers, bauty parlors etc.) and go there by active travel: on foot or by bike. Participating shops give small stickers following each purchase to “players” who have to collect 18 of these to get a guaranteed gift and to enter a prize draw where the main prize is a valuable voucher that can be “spent” in participating shops. (Thus making shops also profit from the winning.) The campaign website was set up during November 2010 and the first shopkeepers were contacted in the beginning of December. Contrary to our preliminary worries, a lot of shopkeepers were open to participate and we managed to start with 70 shops participating! The first phase of the pilot campaign will close in February 2011 with handing over the prizes. The next important step of our project is extending the campaign to other districts of Budapest too. Using our experiences from Zugló, this is planned for Spring-Summer 2011.

The campaing is a part of the Active Acces project, and co-financed by the IEE.