"While the world's politicians are picking fights, the world's backpackers are meeting up on beaches and learning they don't have any enemies." from Day12.com

The Day12 Project is a not-for-profit, multi-media travel resource run by a group of writers, photographers, journalists, students, teachers, promoters, DJs and designers from around the world who are concerned about the social and environmental impact of our journeys. Day12.com was originally set up as an online travel magazine to give talented backpackers the opportunity to publish their writing and photography so that we could try and work out what travel had become in the forty years since the first hippy jumped in a Combi and drove to Goa. As we read, however, we found a movement which had grown far beyond its origins, and discovered that the amount of money being spent by backpackers, and the cash being invested by businesses and governments to attract that spending power, meant independent, youth, student, gap-year - whatever you want to call it - travel had become a major industry; one which was having a far greater environmental, social, cultural and economic impact than we expected.

To say we shouldn't travel is to lose an opportunity. Our money can support local employment, and it can stay in the area, we just need to spend it in the right places.We also need to be more vocal and support those charities and environmental lobby groups who are working to minimise the social and environmental repercussions of our journeys.

The social, economic and environmental issues surrounding travel are enormous. As backpackers we shouldn't be damaging the world in the course of our journeys; we're much too aware of the issues. if you're a writer or photographer, a film-maker, graphic designer, web designer, musician, journalist, promoter or DJ we need your help to reach the many hundreds of thousands of travellers there are out there. It's time to shake the industry up a bit, and we need your talent to do it.

We're not sure if we can honestly say what travel 'is', we're not even sure we want to be able to, but we do know that travel isn't about seeing that monument or visiting that temple. Travel, for us, is the excitement of stepping into a new city for the first time, but at The Day12 Project, we believe that what you do after that is, frankly, your own business. Just don't forget to write it down, or photograph it, and send the results to us at info@day12.com