Rob Klein is just one of the many Hands who are making a lasting difference. He was able to take what he learned through Hands of Peace and establish himself at an institution where he was not alone. Through his journey, Rob met other students who felt the same passion as him, and who cared about issues not commonly confronted.  Here is his story in his own words:

"I've always wanted to do something different that not a lot of people were doing. By having family that lives in Israel, I wanted to learn more about the conflict to gain global competence. After participating in HOP, I knew that I wanted to surround myself with inspirational, aware and growth-oriented people. I was able to take what I learned, go to college, and establish myself there. I'm studying agricultural leadership and science education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I'm in the process of applying to PhD programs in psychology for when I graduate in 2018.

Unite Our Campus was the brainchild of a master's student, Jen Chan, who wanted to do something impactful on campus. Together with a group of eight other students, we planned an event on media representation of various social identities. After securing funding, we went out to find keynote speakers for our dialogue based group. We invited Anjul Nigam, a South Asian actor on Grey's Anatomy who spoke about what it's like to be an Indian actor in Hollywood; Dr. Janice Collins, an Emmy award winning journalism professor at UIUC, who spoke about how black people are portrayed in the news; and Dr. Renee Romano, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs at UIUC. After the keynotes, students went to breakout rooms to discuss contemporary issues on colorism, exoticism, gender, ability status, religion and nationality. We had over 70 people at the event. I worked to design an assessment tool that showed overwhelmingly that people enjoyed the program and learned something. From the qualitative responses, the most powerful was something along the lines of 'I don't need to be afraid of people who are different from me.' I believe we made lasting change. 

Currently, I'm working with an administrator in the office of International Student and Scholar Services, exploring some potential initiatives to pursue, including establishing prayer spaces for Muslim students and other students in campus buildings, connecting cultural student organizations with other student organizations and the administration to build connections and pool resources, and developing diversity and inclusion programming for members of Greek life, student athletes and other student groups on campus."