Calling for participants in a new Sikh organization

[SikhWannaBe]

My comments below are the climax of another thread re: whether the 5Ks are stunting the growth of Sikhism?

Dear Drawrof,

I thank you for the appreciation and I in turn appreciate what you are trying to accomplish. Your suggestions are great and as I stated earlier I try to live by a similar sentiment.

But what I think we need now, is a collective movement towards the ideals that you and Sikhism encourages.

Somebody needs to co-ordinate Sikhs both visible and non-visible to work together on identifying goals for our community members on a personal, community and global level.

I am suggesting a new forum whether it is this website, an organization or another entity where Sikhs can come together for the sole purpose of discussing the advancement of our faith and culture.

To be clear I am not talking about changing our faith in anyway but strictly to identify areas that may need attention and then suggest possible solutions.

As I stated earlier, I am going to be contacting alot of the Sikh community in Toronto regarding the Legal Scholarship I want to create. It seems like a good idea to collect the information of contributors so that we can start to create a list of Sikhs that could be used to advance other issues.

If we did this on a global scale and created a newsletter for example it could become a very powerful medium to influence our community for the positive.

There are other faiths in our communities that may not share the same ideals as ours but are more effective at mobilizing their community. We can mimic their success to our advantage. I often use the Jewish community as an example since I am constantly amazed at their level of organization. For example, do you know that there is a program they created that allows any Jewish child born in Canada to visit Israel for free. Our community is far from creating a program like that but if we don't begin thinking about it, we will never get there.

So what I am asking first is do you want to participate? If you think the idea is stupid then say that too. But realize that I will be doing this in my community regardless of whether anyone else wants to help or not, but any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

And again I do not intend to touch any issues regarding our faith but merely want to address areas of concern for our community.(eg. lack of Sikh lawyers in Toronto) and then suggest solutions.

The first step would be data collection, I will start this in Toronto (any loacl help is welcome), but if someone has a list or wants to create a list of Sikhs in other communities that would be great.

This sounds really exciting to me and hope others share my sentiments.

Charn Gill

[drawrof]

sat sri akaal ji,

sikh wannabe, this is excellent, the first group that you may want to get support from is the centennial foundation. It is comprised of affluent educated sikhs who have run outreach programs to communicate with the greater community at large. It doesn't have a political agenda per se (meaning it talks about sikhism as relevent to the western world. it is comprised of both visible and non-visible sikhs with merit and effort governing alot of the decisions. pm me, and I'll give you some names of people and contact information....something serious can blow up here)

regards, and I support the endeavour.

[ThinkingOne]

Charn ji,

That s such a wonderful idea. And you may be happy to know that we are already working on such thing, a common platform to get sangat on.

Regards.

[Infernal Monk]

I am intrigued by this idea. I feel that the first course of action would be for us to develop a constitution/charter of sorts. Something to outline the mission of the movement, rules and regulations, etc...

[SikhWannaBe]

Wow, 24hrs and we have grown 400%, I hope we can keep that up.

Drawrof - I will PM you after my last exam on Dec. 13th to obtain that list. Thanks in advance.

ThinkingOne - could you offer more details of the work you are describing, sounds like it may be helpful to hear as a source of inspiration or possibly more.

Infernal Monk - a constitution or charter sounds like the right starting point. I will try and create one in a study break and we can debate it online. But of course someone else is welcome to create a draft if they are so inclined.

I feel empowered already from hearing your positive feedback.

Charn

[ThinkingOne]

haanji, this kind of initiative had been put on my shoulders for quiet sometime, but recently only I started working on that, hopefully I have convinced myself for this great responsibility which my esteemed friends have given. This platform is going to have multiple purposes - in short 1. Spreading Awareness about Sikhism 2. Working for Humanity 3. Common platform for discussion among sikhs first, then extendible to new learners.

This is a great vision by one of our associates, who is main inspiration behind the scenes. Point 3 above takes the front seat, as we feel other two will follow automatically. Future plans include opening chapters at different locations to serve the cause towards sikhism.

Feel free to reach me at my yahoo IM arvinps11@yahoo.co.in for any further information about the project in hand.

Best Regards.

[Infernal Monk]

Interesting that you are working towards one as well TO. I think it might be interesting in even having a federation of sorts if we get others associations to cooperate...Of course this is a very farsighted plan....once the basics are up and running.