Feb 18, 2010

Shop Mom & PopBy Emily McFarlanSuburbanChicagoNews.com

It wasn’t your typical valentine.

Sure, it had a heart on it. But the sentiment wasn’t “Be mine” or “How do I love thee?” or even “Happy Valentine’s Day!” It was “Small businesses have big hearts.”

It was just one of many sent out this past month by supporters of The 3/50 Project, a nationwide campaign that encourages people to support their local “mom and pop” businesses.

The 3/50 Project Valentine campaign was meant to drop a truckload of valentines on “The Today Show” and other major morning network newscasts to get national coverage of The 3/50 Project. But one landed here at The Courier-News, addressed to the “Twitter/Facebook Reporter.”

That valentine came from Gina Lempa of Elgin, an independent sales representative who works with those “mom and pop” florists, garden centers, gift shops and interior designers across the Elgin area.

“I worked for a flower shop years ago, so my affection for hometown, community businesses is great,” Lempa said.

That’s why she listed herself as a supporter of The 3/50 Project on its Web site, the350project.net, when she heard about it a year ago.

The grass-roots campaign launched in March, when founder Cinda Baxter of Minneapolis wrote a blog post asking readers to think of three independent businesses they didn’t want to disappear. Then Baxter encouraged them to commit $50 of their monthly spending to those stores and others like them.

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