Sikh Youth Group

[hkaurP]

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa

Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

I have a concern that I need advice on. I am from a small state and we have decided to make School for Sikh children. The problem is that this has been attempted twice but hasn't succeeded very well. This time we are considering buying a place to make it at. There are a lot of modern Sikhs here and we wish to educate them about our religion but it seems like something that is impossible. Does anyone have any advice on how we should attract the Sikh Youth to come and join? And any adivice on how the Sikh Schools/ Youth Groups in other cities have flourished? Hope to get some feedback soon.

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa

Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

[S1ngh]

Thats a very noble effort of yours. I would not recommend you to buy a house/land/space unless you gonna pay it cash 100%. Typically, people will show all type of support in talks but when it comes to walk the talk, they will simply disappear

Marketing and day/class plan plays the main role in attracting youth to come and attend the class. I would say a typical meeting should consist of 50% sikhi class (such as sakhi, punjabi, biography, history etc) with 25% sikhi based group activities and 25% other activities such as sports etc.

Kids/youth are next generation and if you don't have any type of online presence then its gonna be hard to run.. So either website or Facebook page etc and a graphic person who will design top notch posters occasionally. Need techie person to such things.

just my opinions and i hope others will share their ideas on this issue..

[AmarjitKaur]

Bhenji, that indeed is a noble cause/thought to do.

My suggestion would be to talk to couple of more people and ask them to volunteer to teach.

Buy some basic, (you can start from Guru Nanak Dev jee's childhood stories) sikhi related books. The ones we use at our gurudwara are from Hemkunt press in English ( I am assuming you are in some western country without any khalsa school setting in any of gurughars close to you.

Have it going at your local gurughar while deevan is going on. At that time, most of the kids jump around anyways. parents would be happy to see their kids occupied when they can listen to keertan.

YOu are missing on lot of details. When I am writing above, I am assuming you have gurughar in that area, where you wanna have gurmat/khalsa school for kids.

But in case, there is not a gurughar there, then get together at someone's house/basement etc. on one of the weekdays and occupy kids for couple of hours covering some basic punjabi lessons and some sikh history related material and possibly have harmonium tabla with you to have them started on learning keertan. YOu can start with one subject at a time while you get bigger no. of kids to deal with.

I teach Punjabi at our local gurughar that I go to. We have around 60 kids coming there every sunday for learning punjabi, sikh history and keertan. Its going pretty good.

I have a thought going on in my mind to someday go to another gurughar in the area and have it started there as well. I know some families from that area and I know they used to have school before but it didn't work. For past few weeks I have been wanting to talk to managment of that gurughar and see what they think about it. They do have space issue, so I wouldn't be able to do it on Sunday while regular sunday program is going on. I would have to do it on friday/sat eve. Last year, I kept the school going even in summer with only little kids (I used to get about 10 kids in class in summer only and then in sept. regular khalsa school started anyways) at the local gurughar I go to and teach punjabi.

And when eventually you make your mind and couple of people volunteer to help you out, then do ardas and BABA ji will keep things rolling for you. IF sikh has good intentions in mind then babaji always helps and let things go without vighan/interruption (its my belief).

[hkaurP]

We have a Gurdwara here and infact we are building an even bigger one. So we might just build a seperate building next to the new Gurdwara to make the school at. This way more kids would want to come there because it wouldnt be far from the Guru Ghar.

We will look upon it. Thank you for the advice.

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa

Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh.