Tier Three · Movement-To-Movement

Partner Movements.

Tier Three of the threefold welcome is institutional rather than personal. Other youth movements — within the GlobalPEACE International network and beyond — with whom Sikhiyas builds shared programmes on the basis of Sarbat da Bhala and the Radical Center commitment. Movement-to-movement, on terms that respect the autonomy of each.

I. The Distinction From Tiers One And Two

The threefold welcome operates at three different scales of relationship, and the distinctions matter for how each is held.

• Tier One — SikhiyasisIndividual Sikh young people committing personally to the daily disciplines and the Sarbat da Bhala ethic. More →
• Tier Two — Friends & AlliesIndividual young people of any tradition or none, walking alongside in shared Sikhiyas programmes while remaining rooted in their own lineage. More →
• Tier Three — Partner MovementsOther youth movements — institutions, not individuals — building shared programmes with Sikhiyas in ways that respect both movements' autonomy.

Tier Three is not a more advanced version of Tier Two, and Tier Two is not a junior version of Tier Three. They are different relationships: Tier Two welcomes individual people; Tier Three welcomes institutional movements. Many Sikhiyas Friends are members of partner-movement institutions in their own home traditions; the two relationships run in parallel, not in sequence.

II. The Radical Center Commitment

The basis on which Sikhiyas builds Tier Three partnerships is what we call the Radical Center commitment. The phrase is unusual and deserves unpacking.

The word Center here is not a centrist political position. It is not the position of the moderate compromise between extremes. The Center we mean is structural: the place where rooted traditions, doing real work, can sit at one table without any one of them being the centre. It is centred on Sarbat da Bhala as a working ethic shared across traditions, not on any single tradition's claim to interpret it.

The word Radical matters because the Center we are describing is harder to hold than either of its alternatives. It is not the Center of relativism — the soft pluralism that holds all traditions to be saying the same thing if you squint. It is not the Center of secular neutrality — the position that requires every tradition to leave its specifics at the door. It is the Center of rooted pluralism: every party arrives more rooted in their own lineage, not less, and the conversation across roots is the substance of the work.

Three operating commitments come from this:

1. Each Movement Stays Itself

Sikhiyas remains a Sikh-identity movement. A Catholic-Worker-rooted youth movement remains Catholic. A Quaker youth movement remains Quaker. A Jewish Tikkun Olam youth movement remains Jewish. An indigenous-tradition youth movement remains rooted in its specific tradition. We are not building a syncretic super-movement. We are building working partnerships between movements that do, separately, the things their traditions ask them to do.

2. The Shared Work Is Real

Partnerships exist because there is genuine work that two movements can do better together than either can do alone — disaster response, ecological stewardship, refugee accompaniment, advocacy on shared concerns, youth-formation programmes that benefit from cross-tradition exposure. The shared work is the partnership's reason for existing. We do not do partnerships for ceremonial reasons.

3. The Boundary Is Mutual

Each movement holds the boundary of its own tradition. Sikhiyas does not invite partner movements into Sikh-only spaces (like Tier One Sikhiyasi gatherings, Gurdwara Sangat in its strictly liturgical aspect, or Sikh-internal community matters), and partner movements similarly hold their own internal spaces. The shared programmes operate in the joint third space that partnership creates, not by absorbing one movement's spaces into the other's.

III. The GlobalPEACE Network

The primary multilateral architecture for Tier Three partnerships is the GlobalPEACE International network, of which Sikhiyas is a founding constituent partner. GlobalPEACE is a pluralistic-universal platform on which constituent partners — drawn from different traditions, geographies, and intellectual lineages — offer their treasuries into a common conversation, while remaining fully rooted in their own.

GlobalPEACE constituent partners include youth movements rooted in a range of traditions and a range of secular practitioner lineages. The network's common architecture includes shared convenings, joint programming on the human-peace and ecological-peace SDGs, structured exchanges between constituent youth movements (Direction Three of the Sikhiyas International Exchanges programme), and the practice of conceptual Daswandh — each tradition tithing its conceptual treasury into the network's shared pool.

Movements that are GlobalPEACE constituents have a structurally easier path into Sikhiyas Tier Three partnership than non-constituent movements, because the working relationships, conveners, and partnership protocols are already in place. For movements that are not GlobalPEACE constituents but interested in becoming partners, the GlobalPEACE pathway is one route worth exploring.

IV. Bilateral Partnerships Beyond GlobalPEACE

Sikhiyas also builds bilateral partnerships with movements that are not GlobalPEACE constituents — by mutual interest, on a movement-by-movement basis, where the shared work is clear and both sides find the relationship useful. Bilateral partnerships are typically narrower in scope than GlobalPEACE-mediated ones (specific shared programmes rather than full network access) but have their own value, particularly with regional and local youth movements where a global-network framing would be heavier than the relationship needs.

Recent and ongoing bilateral conversations include — by way of illustration — youth movements rooted in regional Indian traditions, university-based interfaith youth networks in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States, indigenous-tradition youth movements in North America and Australia, refugee-led youth organisations in Europe and the Middle East, and ecological-restoration youth movements that are not religiously rooted but share the Sarbat da Bhala ethic.

V. What Partnership Includes

Each partnership is bespoke — there is no single template that fits every movement-to-movement relationship. The architecture below is the menu of possibilities; any specific partnership selects from it.

• Joint conveningsOne or more annual convenings where senior practitioners from both movements meet for working sessions on shared questions
• Cohort exchangesStructured exchanges between Sikhiyas cohorts and partner-movement cohorts, on the architecture described in International Exchanges
• Shared programmesCo-designed and co-delivered programmes — particularly in disaster response, ecological stewardship, and refugee accompaniment — where both movements bring complementary capacity
• Conceptual exchangeMutual hosting of each tradition's intellectual contributions — texts, frameworks, practitioner wisdom — into the partner movement's curriculum, where appropriate and on each side's terms
• Convener relationshipsStanding convener-to-convener lines between Sikhiyas regional coordinators and partner-movement local leads, allowing fast response to opportunities and emergencies that span movements
• Advocacy alignmentWhere both movements share a public-policy concern, joint advocacy positions agreed by both leaderships, on a written-agreement basis, with neither side speaking for the other
• Friend-track participationMembers of partner movements have a structurally simpler path into Tier Two Friends & Allies engagement with Sikhiyas, and Sikhiyasis have similar structural access into the partner movement's equivalent welcome tier

VI. The Memorandum Of Cooperation

Every Tier Three partnership is anchored by a written Memorandum of Cooperation — typically renewed every three years, with annual review of working programmes. The MoC sets out: the shared work the partnership will undertake, the boundaries each movement holds, the convener relationships and named contacts, the financial terms (most partnerships are co-funded across both sides, with neither side donating to the other), the dispute-resolution process, and the exit terms. The MoC is signed by both Directors and the partner movement's equivalent leadership.

Where the partnership relationship breaks down — through safeguarding concerns at either side, established financial misconduct, sustained material harm to the work, or a fundamental change in either movement's conditions that the MoC's exit terms do not adequately handle — the institutional response is MoU suspension or termination. The decision is made jointly between the Directors of Sikhiyas, the partner movement's leadership, and (where appropriate) the Independent Ombudspersons of both institutions. As with the recognition mechanisms set out on the Chardi Kala Award page, suspension and termination are reserved for substantive situations and are held privately. The freedom to mutually wind down a partnership for reasons short of these grounds — diverging strategic priorities, capacity changes, geographic reorientation — is preserved and exercised without institutional consequence on either side.

The discipline of the written MoC is one of the things that distinguishes Tier Three partnerships from informal cross-movement friendships. The friendship is the soil; the MoC is the structure that lets the friendship hold real institutional weight without each instance of joint work needing to be re-negotiated from scratch.

VII. What Sikhiyas Is Looking For In A Partner

Three properties make a movement a strong fit for Sikhiyas partnership. We are not looking for movements that match all three — but the more of them are true, the more naturally the partnership tends to develop.

• Genuine rootedness. The movement is clearly rooted in a tradition, lineage, or principled commitment that it can articulate, defend, and live. Movements that are vague about what they actually stand for tend to make partnerships difficult — there is no there to partner with.
• Operational reality. The movement does actual work in the world — running programmes, holding cohorts, accompanying communities, producing practitioners. Conferencing organisations and pure-advocacy bodies can be useful interlocutors, but they are not, in our framing, the partner movements we are most interested in.
• The Radical Center disposition. The movement is comfortable being itself in a room of differently-rooted others, without either evangelising for its own tradition or dissolving into a soft universalism. The disposition is recognisable in conversation, more than it is articulable in writing.

VIII. What Sikhiyas Is Not Looking For

We have been clear about what we are looking for. We should be equally clear about what we are not.

• We are not looking for partnerships with movements whose practice includes proselytising activity directed at adherents of other traditions. The Radical Center commitment is incompatible with conversion-aimed evangelism, in any direction.
• We are not looking for partnerships built primarily for fundraising, branding, or institutional positioning. If the partnership's logic dissolves once the publicity question is removed, it is not the partnership we are interested in.
• We are not looking for partnerships with movements whose internal governance does not meet basic standards of safeguarding, financial probity, and democratic accountability. Partnership amplifies institutional reputation; partnering with a poorly-governed body damages both sides.
• We are not looking for partnerships that would require Sikhiyas to dilute its Sikh identity, soften its specifically Sikh framings, or treat Sikh-tradition-specific work as embarrassing in mixed company. Equally, we will not ask any partner to do the equivalent on their side.

IX. The Process Of Becoming A Partner

The process is unhurried and exploratory. There is no application form. The architecture, in stages:

1. Initial conversation — a senior practitioner from the prospective partner movement writes to the Sikhiyas Partnerships Office, introducing the movement and the basis of interest. A Sikhiyas Director responds within ten working days, and an exploratory video conversation follows within a month.
2. Mutual due diligence — both sides take time, typically two to four months, to study each other's published work, governance, programmes, and standing in their respective fields. This is not transactional; it is the slower work of working out whether the relationship is real.
3. Working partnership — a small, time-bound shared activity (a convening, a co-hosted study session, a joint short programme) that lets both sides experience working together before committing to longer architecture. Most prospective partnerships either fall away or deepen during this stage.
4. Memorandum of Cooperation — drafted jointly, typically over six to twelve months, signed when both sides are ready. The MoC formalises the partnership and opens the full architecture above.
5. Ongoing review — annual review of working programmes, triennial renewal of the MoC, with full mutual freedom to wind down the partnership at any point with reasonable notice.

X. A Word On Time Horizons

Tier Three partnerships are slow to build, and they are meant to be. The time horizon for a fully working Sikhiyas partnership is three to five years from first conversation to mature shared programming. We do not apologise for the pace. Movements that move faster than this typically end up with brittle relationships that fail at the first difficult conversation. Movements that take this long, in our experience, build relationships that hold across leadership changes, programme adjustments, and the institutional weather of decades.

For prospective partner movements who arrive on this page hoping for a faster route — we understand the impulse. The right next step is the initial conversation, even knowing that the longer architecture will take time. The conversation is itself part of the work, and it costs nothing on either side except patience.