Nearly 30 years ago, it came to Brent Hample in a dream.

Hample, who was a University sophomore at the time, recalls that the vivid dream involved Jesus, foreigners, food and himself, which he believed was a call for him to go to India. The only problem was that he did not know when the opportunity would arise.

That opportunity came nearly six years later when he left Eugene to go to India as a part of the child sponsorship program at Central Lutheran Church. For Hample, those six weeks in India changed his life, and he worked vigorously for the next two decades to help people in need in India.

In 1994, Hample’s efforts finally culminated in the creation of India Partners, a Eugene-based non-profit Christian grassroots organization that provides several “self-help” programs to impoverished people in India, such as primary school, fishing initiatives and health care provisions.

With offices in India, Portland, Eugene and Washington state, Hample, the CEO and president of India Partners, said the company has given nearly $3 million to numerous programs and initiatives in India. To add to these initiatives, the company began to provide microfinance loans — relatively small loans that typically range from $25 to $1,000 — to Indian fishermen after their boats were destroyed by the massive 2004 tsunami and earthquake. More than half a decade later, Hample estimates India Partners has provided nearly 50,000 people with loans — a company record of nearly $400,000 alone was given out last year.

However, with help from the University’s Microfinance Initiative, Hample is hopeful the company can expand its microfinance initiatives to more people in India.

“It seemed like the perfect fit,” Elizabeth Aldrich, the club’s vice president said in an email. “India Partners has such a wide variety of projects that it can be difficult for them to have specialized knowledge in every one of them, and our club thought we could provide some of that specialized knowledge to help develop a project we saw as valuable.”

Aldrich explained that India Partners has a rather unique business model, because it partners with organizations that are native to India to help them develop and implement projects rather than handling every aspect of their projects themselves.

“A lot of organizations that do projects abroad face one of two challenges: Either they work from a great distance, which doesn’t allow them to get their hands into a project and know that what they’re doing is really helping anyone, or they do the opposite and go to the country and do the projects themselves, in which case their projects often have unintended consequences because their understanding of the local cultural can never be as great as a local resident’s,” Aldrich said.

“The model which India Partners operates with allows them to overcome, at least a little bit, those two problems because they hand the reigns of the project over to an organization that understands the complexities of the local culture without completely giving up oversight on the project.”

Nevertheless, organizations such as India Partners face significant challenges in a country that has been victimized by the type of financial model that was implemented to help its citizens. Lamia Karim, a University associate professor of anthropology and the associate director for the Center for the Study of Women in Society, said microfinance loans were lauded as the “magic bullet for alleviating poverty for women” in countries such as India nearly a decade ago. Despite the high return rates that Karim said were marketed around 98 percent, she explained that these loans had very strict loan conditions. Unlike typical loans, microfinance loans have high interest rates and shorter maturity dates.

Karim said women were particularly easier targets for banks because they were largely confined to the domestic space. Because many people spent the money on other essentials, such as food and other necessities rather than entrepreneurial ventures, Karim said many of the women who borrowed money were unable to pay the money back.

“Microfinance does not help poor people,” Karim said. “In rare instances, it moves people from poverty. You need to create producers and not consumers and ‘entrepreneurs.’ Women who stay within the patriarchal home have their money usually used by their husbands and sons. However, women who have marketable skills can be helped, provided the institution is willing to invest in ensuring market access for them and trains them. Most microfinance institutions are unwilling to invest in human development.”

However, Hample said there is a big difference between what many of the commercial banks are doing and what India Partners is doing as a non-profit agency. Unlike many of the banks that offer small loans at high interest rates with increased pressure to pay back the money, India Partners creates “self-help” groups in addition to lending out money so that people can learn how to start up a business and encourage each other to repay those loans, even though Hample said there is no obligation to do so.

An example of this is an agency-run, one-to-two-year tailoring program in which young women and widows learn how to use foot-powered sewing machines so they are able to make clothes and sell them for their own profit. Upon graduation from the program, Hample said these women receive a free sewing machine and are able to use the skills they have learned to sustain themselves.

Hample said these skills are especially important in a country that has a 63.8 percent literacy rate and the second largest population in the world, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

“In villages, especially, where we do a lot of our work, the literacy rate is a lot lower,” Hample said. “We’ve always put an emphasis on teaching them how to get involved in new projects like these. Most people don’t have to read and write, so they have to learn things through speaking and talking to one another.”

Karim also agreed and said non-profit Christian organizations may be better at giving loans because they operate from a charitable perspective rather than viewing people as a means to generate profit.

“A Christian charity is in all likelihood less coercive than the market-driven microfinance institutions in loan recovery,” Karim said. “After all, they work within a charitable ethos.”

It’s no secret that with finals week comes sleep deprivation, last-minute cramming and, above all, the stress associated with the pressure to do well. With finals week soon upon us, thousands of UConn students will spend hours holed up in Homer Babbidge Library with their textbooks, pulling those infamous all-nighters and consuming superfluous amounts of caffeine. But while these study tactics may prove to be successful for some students, and while it is no doubt important to perform well on your exams, it is even more important to take care of yourself first.

The stress of final exams can take a toll on both your mind and body. During the next week, many students will be sleeping less than they normally would and eating protein bars and Monster drinks in substitution of real meals. Between those 15-page papers and two-hour cumulative exams, it can be challenging to find time to squeeze in the work you need to do, much less keep your eyes open to actually take the exam.

But to avoid going into burnout mode before your exams even begin, try to put your health first before getting that “A.” Acing exams are guaranteed to boost your GPA and earn you a desirable grade in your class, but potentially compromising your well being in order to achieve this doesn’t make it worth it.

It may sound redundant, but just because it is finals week, don’t sacrifice what may seem trivial, such as eating healthily or going to the gym. One hour spent at the gym each day, will not cost you 10 points on your final in the long run and your brain functions much better on real meals as opposed to five cups of coffee. Force yourself to take breaks. Take a 10-minute walk outside, flip through a magazine, cook a meal or go grab a drink at Starbucks. Go to the library not just to pour over PowerPoints, but relieve some stress by taking advantage of the therapy dogs. Get an actual full night’s worth of sleep—you owe it to yourself. No matter how difficult you anticipate your final to be, pulling an all-nighter may just end up making you feel more sluggish in the morning. If you stay organized and prioritize the tasks you need to accomplish, forcing your brain to perform while functioning on no sleep probably won’t be necessary.

Approaching your finals in a healthy state of mind is the first step in performing well. Good luck on your finals Huskies and have a great summer!

Imagine driving a low powered go-kart across more than 3,000 miles of the most dangerous roads on the planet.

This is how UCF graduate Cedric Dahl describes the charity rickshaw race he is participating in to help raise awareness of the human trafficking problem across India.

“The choices ranged from golf to making the world a wee bit better … so I thought I’d take a crack at the latter,” said Dahl, describing how he went from a job with Microsoft at the ripe age of 28 to riding a rickshaw across India.

While searching for charitable adventures he met Chris Keller, a study-abroad student at Mannheim University and pre-med student at San Diego State, who introduced him to the idea of “charity adventuring” and informed Dahl about the Rickshaw Rally.

The race began April 17 at 10 a.m. Dahl joined with Keller and documentarian Daniel Gonzales. They began their journey in the town of Cochin.

They will be traveling 3,300 miles from Cochin deep into the northeast city of Meghalaya.

An auto rickshaw seats one person comfortably, generates seven horsepower and has a top speed of around 33 mph.

When asked by organizers to choose a team name, one of the boys yelled out “Rabbit Foot” in hopes of bringing them some luck.

Altogether there are 72 teams in the charity adventure from all parts of the world.

“It seems our shared madness knows no limits and doesn’t discriminate by race or region,” Dahl said.

As soon as the boys took off they immediately got lost. They quickly realized how insane driving in India really is.

Dahl describes the driving rules in India as people going forward as fast as they can while simply trying to not kill each other. They were run off the road several times before realizing it was normal.

After six days and near-death experiences virtually occurring hourly, Dahl and his team no longer get adrenaline rushes right before oncoming traffic almost kills them.

So why do it?

Because it’s for a cause. These three adventurers are trying to raise awareness of human trafficking and are doing so by raising funds. So far after six days and traveling 1,056 miles, they have raised $1,254.

Human trafficking victimizes more children in India than anywhere else in the world, according to rickshawadventure.com.

Dahl feels that there is no point of life without freedom, which human trafficking steals from individuals.

Although human trafficking is illegal in the country, enforcement is extremely weak due to the limitations of the country’s judicial system. This has resulted in substantial trafficking in woman and children within India and its borders.

Dahl and his team are making sure to raise the awareness of this growing issue by informing everyone about their cause.

Dahl graduated from UCF in 2007 with a BSBA in Management of Information Systems. He was possessed to live out his dreams while he was still young and capable and began to do so in the Rickshaw Rally.

“Our core values are people, freedom and creativity. The human trafficking problem affects people and their freedom. Our team is using a bit of creativity to help people gain their freedom. So this problem touches on all three of our core values,” Dahl said.

Help fight human trafficking by visiting rickshawadventure.com, which allows individuals to make a pledge and donate funds, which go directly to the International Justice Mission to combat slavery and forced prostitution. Together they have raised more than $45 million.

Though Thursday marks the last day that members of a union representing academic student employees throughout the UC system can vote in the union’s tri-annual statewide leadership election, which many assert is the most contested in the union’s history, there has been concern that policies are not in place to ensure a fair election free from vote-tampering.

Members of the United Auto Workers Local 2865 – a union representing nearly 12,000 graduate students, readers and tutors – began voting Tuesday in the election. While an elections committee determined voting protocols before the election began, there has been growing concern that the policies are insufficient to protect against vote-tampering and fraud, according to Adam Hefty, the elections committee member from UC Santa Cruz.

According to Hefty, the elections committee agreed to protocol with “few serious protections against tampering,” despite the fact that the union is facing what he said is the most contested election it has ever experienced, with two candidate slates and most campus, and all executive leadership, positions contested.

“There are lots of members that have been coming to the polls and voting, and their votes will certainly be counted, but the election protocol, or lack of protocol, does give me pause,” he said. “We’ll have to see what happens in the next couple of days before a final judgment can be made.”

In a blog post, Hefty detailed some of the concerns, which included whether student identification must be shown at polling locations, how and where ballot boxes will be stored overnight and how ballots will eventually be counted.

However, Erik Tollerud, a UC Irvine graduate student and elections committee alternate, said he is confident that the policies the committee decided on will enable the union to have a fair election.

“I’m completely confident that the procedure we’ve decided on democratically as a committee will make it clear that if tampering was to happen, the procedures will make it clear, and then those issues can be addressed,” Tollerud said.

While there is debate regarding whether or not election policies were adequate to protect against vote-tampering, both Tollerud and Hefty agreed that some of the concern going into this election stems from the union’s highly contentious contract ratification vote late last semester and allegations by some that the policies enacted there were not sufficient to protect against possible vote-tampering.

While there is contention regarding election policies that were not approved, the policies that are in place do help ensure transparency in the election, said Megan Wachspress, a campus graduate student and head steward for the union at UC Berkeley.

According to Wachspress, the elections policies that were in place to protect against fraud in the election involve checking voter names against roll sheets and a two-envelope balloting system.

Lizzy Mattiuzzi, a UC Berkeley graduate student and elections committee chair alternate, said despite concerns raised regarding certain election policies, she is confident in the policies that are in place and is hopeful regarding the outcome of the election.

“Overall, I’m pretty confident that despite the fact that on the election committee we were outnumbered on certain procedures and policies we proposed, I have confidence in the process that we’re putting out,” Mattiuzzi said. “I’m confident in the process, even though I wasn’t happy with every decision by the elections committee.”

Are you waking up at 4 a.m. on Friday to watch the royal wedding? I’m not. I am experiencing royal wedding burnout that is rapidly developing into British culture burnout.

I yearn for the days when I could procrastinate for hours online and not be assaulted by endless side-by-side pictures comparing the style of Princess Diana and Kate.

I’m sorry, “Catherine.” I want to hear more about Snooki’s weight loss, what bathroom Charlie Sheen is snorting his drugs in, who Suri Cruise is wearing — and I want to read the newest obnoxious quote from Gwyneth Paltrow on why we should all be rich.

And I don’t want to have to search for those articles. I should be able to just go straight to the Yahoo! homepage and see them as headlines. Don’t the editors know what is important?

If I see another italicized or pastel-colored royal wedding headline I am going to dump all of my English Breakfast tea into Lake Houston. I might even do the same with all of my commonwealth teas.

Regina Spektor provides a perfect critique of the royal wedding hysteria on her Facebook page. Since her name means “Queen,” she is a credible source on these matter.

“Perhaps royal people everywhere should apologize for the years of pretending they were somehow chosen by a higher power to rule, enslave and colonize,” Spektor said on her Facebook page. “Instead of holding a déjà vu wedding — a strange costly neurosis playing out on the world’s psyche, they could just admit they aren’t any closer to the top. They can’t pull some strings where it matters.”

Amen.

I will love Regina Spektor until the day I die — until her glottal stops become a natural result of her senility and inability to remember words, and are no longer just a part of her singing style.

She makes a valid point. The British royal family doesn’t have any real power anymore — and this is rightfully so. Their chief jobs are waving, wearing hats, collecting flowers from well-wishers and looking approachable at pancake-flipping marathons.

Apparently Prince William and Kate Middleton are very promising in these areas, especially in the area of waving. They have decided to use an open palm wave — how progressive of them.

According to The Mirror, an English online publication, “The open palm display signals openness and approachability that is only slightly tempered by the fact that it is very similar to the signal for ‘Stop.’”

Do we really need articles published about the body language of these people?

There has even been a phenomenon lately of people finding the likeness of Middleton in random objects. A British couple apparently found her face on a jellybean and is trying to sell it online. I’m sure they will fetch quite a few pounds for it.

I found myself a victim of this subliminal royal wedding advertising the other day as I was unconsciously finding Her Royal Highness Princess William of Wales’ face in lattes, sidewalks, dirty napkins, and ashtrays. Fortunately, after getting a solid eight hours of sleep I was healed of my royal wedding psychosis.

If there comes a time when it is impossible to fight the royal propaganda, maybe UH could just cash in on the neurosis.

Maybe we could “accidentally” incorporate Kate Middleton’s face into a new sidewalk, or possibly into the layout of an entire building. We would have people transferring in from all over the country to see, not only James Franco, but Kate’s likeness as well.

Let us hope that all of this dies down soon, and the royals go back to their charity work and walking their Corgis.

I hope this happens sooner rather than later, because I’m not sure how long I can go without a cup of Twinings tea.