New Zealand hitch course 2007


 * This never happened, but it's here. It might inspire someone someday. Feel free to copy and paste.

Guaka is seriously thinking of setting up a hitchhiking course in New Zealand, sometime in Summer 2007. Let's gather people and ideas on this wiki who want to help organize. You don't even have to be in New Zealand or going there. You can help with ideas, writing, planning, contacting people, and by improving the wiki pages on the Hitchwiki.

Goals

 * 1) Get more people to stick out their thumbs
 * 2) Create positive media attention for both hitchhiking and hospitality exchange
 * 3) Have more hitchhiking courses all over the world
 * 4) Create a useful Hitchhiking Zine and useful information for others who want to organize Hitch courses.

You want to help?

 * Guaka: ideas, wiki, writing, hitching
 * amylin: graphics, ideas, hitching
 * Joep: graphics, ideas, writing and doing one in Holland
 * Anu: hitching-virgin and soon-to-be NZ resident, so perfect test-dummy for the project. Also capable of some writing and techie things.
 * Luna1: ideas, writing, remember the Golden Days of hitching in NZ
 * Zac: ideas, writing, anything else, can't do any hitching in NZ :(
 * Salman: promotion via digihitch, ideas, coding help


 * Add yourself if you want to help out, give a short overview of what you want to do. And, you don't have to be in New Zealand to help!

Communication
New Zealand hitch course - call for participation

We can communicate through this wiki, but Guaka also set up an open mailing list: [mailto:hitchcourse@googlegroups.com hitchcourse@googlegroups.com]

You can join it on http://groups.google.com/group/hitchcourse/about?hl=en

Where
You can't really hitchhike easily on the ferries in New Zealand, so there are two main options:
 * 1) South Island
 * 2) North Island

Guaka is currently located in Nelson, and there will be some more people at the CouchSurfing Collective who are interested in working on this.

Nelson - Nelson
Around South Island, starting in Nelson.

When
A weekend in Southern Hemisphere Summer. Probably in March.

The name
Hitchhiking competitions are fairly common in Eastern Europe, especially in Russia. But the course is going to be less competitive, with more focus on people communicating and improving intercultural understanding. That's why Guaka decided to use the word course:
 * 1) The act of moving from one point to another; progress; passage.
 * 2) The ground or path traversed; track; way.
 * 3) Motion, considered as to its general or resultant direction or to its goal; line progress or advance.
 * from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English

Hospitality exchange
We can use existing hospitality exchange networks, CouchSurfing, Hospitality Club, WWOOFing farms, to find people who can offer hitchhikers some food and/or a place to stay if they didn't make it for the night.

Media
We want to get articles in newspapers and items on TV.