A Network Forming · An Architecture Already Built

Sikhiyas Alumni.

The standing relationship between Sikhiyas and those who have completed cohort programmes — the annual gathering, the mentor pathway for current applicants, the continuing network, and the disposition that being an alumnus represents. This page sets out the architecture in full, with an honest note on where we currently are in the early years of the programme.

I. An Honest Note On Where We Are

It is worth saying at the start of this page what would, in a more institutionally-mature programme, be assumed: Sikhiyas is in its early years. The first full cohort is in the field; subsequent cohorts are in selection or preparation; the alumni network is in formation rather than maturity. This page describes the architecture we have built for that network — deliberately, in advance — but the network itself is still small enough that most readers of this page will, by the time they engage with it, be looking at architecture being filled rather than architecture in steady state.

We have set the architecture out in writing now, in this fuller form, for two reasons. First, applicants thinking about a Sikhiyas placement deserve to see the longer arc the institution is committed to, not just the cohort year itself. The placement is one chapter; the alumni relationship is the rest of the book. Second, the institutional discipline of describing the alumni architecture before it is at scale forces us to build it intentionally rather than improvising it later, when expediency would be the dominant force shaping it. Architecture committed to in writing tends to be honoured. Architecture left to emerge tends to drift toward whatever serves the institution at the time.

This page will, over the coming years, accumulate the actual texture of the alumni network — names of alumni-led initiatives, photographs from annual gatherings, short reflections from those who have returned to mentor, and the kind of evidence-of-life that turns architecture into community. For now, what is on this page is the shape of what is being built.

II. What Being A Sikhiyas Alumnus Means

A Sikhiyas alumnus is someone who has completed a cohort programme — a Seva Placement, an International Exchange, a Disaster Response training, or another structured cohort engagement — and has therefore stepped out of the cohort context and into the longer relationship with Sikhiyas that follows.

Being an alumnus is a standing rather than a role. It is conferred automatically on cohort completion, requires no application, costs nothing, and asks nothing in return that the alumnus has not chosen to give. There are no alumni dues, no required attendance, no annual giving expectations, no levels-of-engagement scoring, and no quiet pressure to keep producing institutional value. The relationship is, structurally, a gift — from Sikhiyas to alumni and from alumni to Sikhiyas — held together by genuine continued interest rather than by transactional obligation.

This framing is deliberate. Many institutional alumni programmes operate by a logic of perpetual extraction — alumni are seen primarily as a future donor base, an employer-network resource, or a brand-burnishing pipeline. We do not run that kind of programme. Sikhiyas is fee-funded rather than donations-funded, and our alumni relationships are not, structurally, a fundraising channel. The relationship exists because it is meaningful in itself — to the alumni, to the institution, and to the work that benefits when both stay in honest contact.

III. The Annual Gathering

The single most important institutional moment in the alumni calendar is the annual Sangat — held each November, at the EduCARE Kangra campus, bringing together current cohort participants, alumni, mentors, patrons, and partner-movement representatives for three days of working sessions, shared meals, ritual, and conversation.

Alumni are warmly invited every year, with travel-cost support available for those for whom cost would be a barrier. Many alumni do not attend every year — that is not the expectation — but most try to come at least every two or three years, and the gathering's role in keeping the alumni network alive across geographies has, in our planning, been weighted heavily.

The gathering structure includes: working sessions on the questions the network is currently engaging with; one-to-one mentoring conversations between alumni and current cohort participants; a public set of short reflections from recent alumni on what the year after cohort has held; collective reading of the Pran with alumni and current cohort together; and the closing Langar on the third day, at which alumni, current cohort, mentors, and Patrons sit at one Pangat. The architecture is intentionally simple. The point is the people, not the programme.

IV. The Mentor Pathway

The most consequential way alumni continue to shape Sikhiyas is by mentoring current applicants and current cohort participants. The pathway has three structured forms.

Application-Stage Mentoring

Alumni who choose to do so are paired with prospective applicants — typically applicants from the alumnus's home geography, programme stream, or background context — for a small set of structured conversations during the application window. The pairing is not gatekeeping; it is orientation. The applicant gets honest answers about what cohort actually looked like for someone like them; the alumnus gets to do the work of receiving the next generation into the same arc they themselves came through.

Cohort-Period Mentoring

During active cohort, current participants have the standard Mentor structure described on the Seva Placements page — that is the formal mentoring spine of the placement, held by senior practitioners on the implementing-partner side. Alumni mentoring sits alongside this, in a lighter form: a fortnightly call between an alumnus and a current participant, oriented toward the longer arc rather than the immediate field issues. Many participants find this lighter alumni voice genuinely helpful, particularly during the harder middle weeks of placement.

Post-Cohort Continuing Mentoring

For alumni who have, in turn, completed cohort and are now in the year-after-cohort phase — when the question of what to do with what one has just done is most live — Sikhiyas pairs them with senior alumni who completed their own cohort five or more years earlier. The longer-arc voice tends to be more useful in that phase than the recent voice; mentoring at this stage is about how the disposition formed in cohort gets carried into a working life, which is a question seniority answers better than recency.

All three forms of mentoring are voluntary. Alumni are not required to mentor — many do not, and that is honoured. Those who do mentor receive light institutional support (mentor briefings, suggested conversation structures, access to a mentor-only convenor on call) but no financial compensation, because the mentoring is itself an instance of Vand Chhako in the alumni's life.

V. The Continuing Network

Beyond the formal architecture, alumni stay in continuing relationship with each other and with Sikhiyas through several lighter-touch channels.

• The alumni circle listAn opt-in mailing list, deliberately low-volume — typically four to six emails per year — carrying news of current cohort progress, alumni initiatives worth knowing about, the annual Sangat details, and the occasional substantive piece written by an alumnus or a Sikhiyas Director.
• Regional convener gatheringsWhere there are multiple Sikhiyas alumni in a single city, regional convener gatherings happen organically — typically twice a year, hosted in alumni homes or local Gurdwaras, light in structure, focused on shared meals and shared reflection rather than formal programming.
• Programme-stream networksAlumni whose cohort engagement was in a specific programme stream (Disaster Response, Ecological Stewardship, Skills & Livelihoods, etc.) often stay connected to that stream's working community as senior practitioners — appearing as occasional teachers in study circles, contributors to programme reviews, and field reference points for current cohort questions.
• The Patrons LetterAlumni receive the annual Patrons Letter — the institutional accountability document — alongside Patrons, current cohort families, and partner movements. The Letter is the institution's annual statement of where the work stands, what has changed, and what is being held accountable for the year ahead.

VI. What Alumni Are Not Asked To Do

This list matters because the absence of these requests is part of how we hold the alumni relationship honestly.

• Alumni are not asked to give financially to Sikhiyas. We do not solicit alumni donations, and we do not accept them. The institution is fee-funded, and the alumni relationship is not, structurally, a fundraising channel.
• Alumni are not asked to recruit applicants. They may, of course, talk about Sikhiyas in their own communities and recommend it to people they know — many do — but this is their own initiative, not an institutional ask.
• Alumni are not asked to maintain particular dispositions, identities, or beliefs as a condition of continued alumni standing. An alumnus who completes cohort and subsequently moves in directions different from the disposition the cohort represented remains an alumnus. The cohort experience was real; the standing is not contingent on a fidelity test.
• Alumni are not asked to remain in active engagement. An alumnus who, after cohort, falls out of contact with Sikhiyas for years is not, on returning, treated as having any explaining to do. The alumni relationship is a standing, not a performance.
• Alumni are not asked to publicise their alumni status. Some alumni name their Sikhiyas engagement in their professional bios; others do not. Both are fine. Sikhiyas does not publish alumni lists, and alumni status is not part of the institutional brand-building of the programme.

VII. The Sikhiyasi Connection

Many — though not all — alumni go on to declare as Sikhiyasis after completing cohort. The two are structurally separate: cohort completion makes someone an alumnus, while Sikhiyasi declaration is a separate act that can be made before, during, or long after cohort, and is open to non-alumni as well as alumni.

Where alumni do go on to declare as Sikhiyasis, the cohort experience tends to have given them a working acquaintance with the disciplines and the disposition that the Sikhiyasi declaration formalises. This is not a coincidence. The cohort was, in many ways, a year-long rehearsal of what living as a declared Sikhiyasi feels like, with the institutional support of Sikhiyas around it. Alumni who declare typically describe the declaration as recognising a relationship that already existed, rather than as taking on something new.

For Friends & Allies alumni — those who completed cohort under the Friends pathway rather than as Sikhiyasis — the post-cohort path is different but equally substantive. Many go on to deepen their engagement with their own home tradition's youth movement, often with new clarity about what tradition-rooted formation actually involves. Some take up convener roles in their own home traditions. Some continue light Sikhiyas engagement as Friends. All paths are honoured, and the alumni relationship is held the same way regardless of which pathway the alumnus completed cohort under.

VIII. For Those Approaching The Alumni Threshold

For current cohort participants approaching the end of their placement, a brief note on what the transition into alumni standing actually involves.

There is no graduation ceremony in the conventional sense. Cohort completion is acknowledged with the issuance of the Sikhiyas Certificate of Completion (the design and structure of which is described on the Scholarship Details page), a closing-of-cohort conversation between the participant, the Mentor, and where appropriate the Cohort Director, and a final entry in the cohort journal. The participant receives, in writing, an invitation to the next annual Sangat and to the alumni circle list. That is the formal transition.

What participants describe most often, in the weeks after cohort closes, is a particular kind of disorientation — the rhythm of cohort has ended, the field placement has ended, and life as it was before cohort has not quite resumed. This phase is normal; it is the necessary integration of what cohort gave the participant into the longer arc of their life, and it typically takes between one and three months to settle.

Sikhiyas holds this phase lightly, deliberately. We do not flood new alumni with engagement requests in the first three months. We send the Patrons Letter, the Sangat save-the-date, and one personal check-in from the Mentor at six weeks. Beyond that, the pace at which the new alumnus reconnects is theirs to set. The architecture is here when they want to engage with it. It will still be here in five years if that is when they want to engage with it.

IX. Looking Ahead

The Sikhiyas alumni network, in the longer arc, is intended to be one of the most consequential institutional outcomes of the programme. Cohorts are time-bound. Placements are time-bound. The wisdom map is intellectually substantial but lives only insofar as practitioners carry it forward. The alumni network is the structural form in which the cumulative effect of Sikhiyas accumulates over decades — a community of senior practitioners, scattered across geographies and fields, who carry the disposition Sikhiyas tried to form and who continue to find each other useful as the years go on.

Five years from now, this page will look different. Ten years from now, very different. We are at the start of building something that is meant to last across generations. The early alumni — those whose cohort years are happening now, in the foundational years of the programme — will, in time, become the senior figures in this network: the alumni who mentor new alumni, who host regional gatherings, who sit on selection panels, who carry the working memory of what the institution was in its earliest form.

This is one of the dispositions worth holding through the early years: the recognition that what we are building now is not the network itself, but the conditions under which the network will become what it is meant to be. The architecture matters more, in this phase, than the immediate evidence-of-life. Both will, in time, fill out together.