The Hippo Roller Challenge

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while might remember the interview I did with Rob and Pol Summerhayes a few months ago. Rob and Pol are on a cross-continental bike trip from South Africa to Wales. Along the way they're raising funds for two great charities.

One of those charities was The Hippo Roller. Never heard of a hippo roller? Neither had we until we started reading Rob and Pol's blog. A hippo roller is a simple invention designed to help rural impoverished communities with limited access to water. The roller is a large drum that can hold 90 litres (24 gallons) of water and can be pushed along the ground, making it much easier to transport clean drinking water. It's a simple technology that has the capacity to make a huge difference in places where water is scarce.

Cool, huh?

We think so anyway. That's why we're launching The Hippo Roller Challenge to raise funds to buy hippo rollers. Our goal is to donate as many hippo rollers as possible, while also continuing to make our user-generated travel guide the best travel wiki out there.

The way this challenge works is very simple: The more people contribute to our wiki travel guide, the more hippo rollers we will donate. There are six milestones along the way, and whenever we reach a milestone, we'll donate a designated number of hippo rollers. Here's how it breaks down:

• When we reach 15 million characters in the guide, we will donate 1 hippo roller
  
• When we reach 16 million characters, we will donate 2 hippo rollers
  
• When we reach 17 million characters, we will donate 4 hippo rollers
  
• When we reach 18 million characters, we will donate 8 hippo rollers
  
• When we reach 19 million characters, we will donate 16 hippo rollers
  
• When we reach 20 million characters, we will donate 32 hippo rollers.
  

The challenge will run from November 2 to February 28. If we've reach 20 million characters in the wiki travel guide, we will have donated 63 hippo rollers! At US$ 105 each (including transport), that's a total donation of US$ 6615, an amount we'd be delighted to be donating! There's actually a slight headstart on reaching the first milestone, as there are currently 14,084,982 characters in the guide.

Of course, we could just donate the money, but where's the fun in that? We want you to be a part of this. So, are you with us?

Getting Started

So you want to get involved, right? If you're not sure how to get started, here are a few good starting points:

• Write about your hometown or nearest tourist attraction.
  
• Write about the last place you went to on holidays.
  
• Write about the events and festivals in your country or city
  
• Write an article about family-friendly activities in your city
  
• Write a guide to eating out in your hometown
  
• Put together a language phrasebook
  
• Or check out some of our other ongoing guide projects
  

If you've never written for the wiki travel guide before, here are some great guides to help you get started:

• Getting started in the wiki
  
• Wiki coding for dummies
  

Now, that's all from us for now. We're really excited about the potential for this challenge and look forward to seeing how many hippo rollers we can donate! Keep an eye on this blog for updates about how the challenge is progressing. There's also a thread on the Hippo Roller comp in the forum if you'd like to chime in.