For Journalists, Researchers & Media Contacts

Press Kit.

For journalists, researchers, and partner-institution media contacts seeking to engage with Sikhiyas. This page sets out the press contact, a brief institutional summary suitable for citation, what materials we will and will not provide, our photograph and quotation policies, and the topics on which Sikhiyas is and is not the appropriate institutional voice. Read carefully before making contact.

I. Press Contact

• Emailpress@sikhiyas.org
• Response timeWithin five working days for routine enquiries; within 48 hours for time-sensitive enquiries with a stated deadline
• Held byThe Sikhiyas Communications Office, with editorial review by one of the Directors before any on-the-record material is provided

All press enquiries should come to this address in writing. We do not engage with press calls without a prior written enquiry establishing the publication, journalist, intended angle, deadline, and on-the-record-or-background terms of the engagement.

II. Institutional Summary

The following summary is suitable for citation. Use of any framing not in this summary should be cleared with the Communications Office before publication.

For shorter-form citation, the following two-sentence summary is also approved for press use:

"Sikhiyas is a structured year-long youth-formation programme for Sikh young adults in the diaspora and in India, combining field placements, study circles, and international exchanges. Founded in 2024 and run from a base institution in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh, the programme operates on a fee-funded model with a four-band scholarship system."

III. Director Biographies

Approved Director biographies are available on request from the Communications Office. We do not publish full biographies on the open web for privacy and editorial-control reasons. Short-form citation (name, role, founding year) is approved without further clearance:

• Navleen KaurDirector, Sikhiyas. Co-founder, 2024.
• Adarshveer SinghDirector, Sikhiyas. Co-founder, 2024.

For longer-form biographical material — typically a 200–400 word biography per Director, with approved professional background, education, and prior institutional roles — write to the Communications Office naming the publication and intended use. Director biographies are released on a per-publication basis with version control, so that what appears in print is what was approved and any subsequent edits are tracked.

IV. What We Will Provide

For genuine journalistic, research, or partner-institution enquiries, Sikhiyas will provide:

• Approved institutional summariesThe two summaries in Section II, plus longer-form versions on request
• Director biographiesOn request and with publication-specific approval as described above
• On-the-record interviews with DirectorsFor substantive pieces, with at least four weeks' notice and editorial-review of any direct quotations attributed to the Directors
• Background briefingsFor journalists writing pieces where Sikhiyas is contextual rather than central, off-the-record briefings are routinely provided to help the journalist get the facts right without the institution being the named source
• Scholarly accessFor academic researchers studying youth formation, diaspora institutional life, the wider Sikh institutional landscape, or related subjects, expanded access is generally available — including (with appropriate ethics review) interviews with Directors, alumni who have given consent, and access to non-confidential institutional documents
• Photographs of the campus and physical infrastructureThe Kangra campus, training facilities, study circle spaces, and the like — but not photographs of cohort participants (see Section V)
• The Sikhiyas logo and visual brand assetsFor approved use, with a short style guide, available on request

V. What We Will Not Provide

The architecture of what we will not provide is as deliberate as what we will. Read this section carefully before making any enquiry.

• No photographs of cohort participants. Sikhiyas does not provide journalist-usable photographs of cohort participants, alumni, Sikhiyasis, Friends & Allies, or any individual associated with the programme other than the Directors (whose press photographs are released individually with consent). This includes anonymised, blurred, or back-of-head images. The institutional commitment to participant privacy is non-negotiable.
• No interviews with cohort participants without separate written consent. Journalists wishing to speak to cohort participants must obtain written consent from the participant directly, after the participant has had the opportunity to decline without institutional consequence. Sikhiyas does not arrange these interviews; we provide contact only with explicit participant agreement. Most participants decline. We support that.
• No interviews with Solidarity Scholarship participants in their capacity as scholarship recipients. The institutional commitment described on the Solidarity Scholarship page — no public-facing communication using a participant's name, image, or community identity without separate written consent obtained directly from the participant after cohort close — applies absolutely to press engagement.
• No interviews with Chardi Kala Award recipients in connection with the award. The Award's institutional architecture (described on the Chardi Kala Award page) explicitly excludes external publicity. Award recipients are not made available for press engagement on the basis of the award. Where a recipient is publicly visible for other reasons, that visibility is theirs to engage with as they choose, separately from any Sikhiyas connection.
• No comment on intra-Sikh sectarian matters. Sikhiyas operates within the mainstream Sikh tradition and does not hold institutional positions on questions of maryada dispute, sectarian alignment, political contestation within the Panth, or theological controversy. Journalists writing on these subjects should consult the appropriate institutional voices, which Sikhiyas is not.
• No comment on Indian or diaspora Sikh political questions. The Sikh community is in many of its geographies engaged in significant political questions — relations with the Indian state, diaspora political organisation, particular electoral or policy contestations — on which Sikhiyas does not hold institutional positions and will not provide commentary.
• No comment on partner organisations' work or governance. Where journalists are writing about EduCARE, RISHEE, CIEEL, GlobalPEACE International, or any partner institution, Sikhiyas does not provide commentary on the partner. Direct your enquiry to the institution itself.
• No comment on cohort applicant or alumni careers, achievements, or visible work. Where Sikhiyasis or alumni are publicly visible in their own professional or institutional lives, we do not comment on them. Their visible work is their own and is theirs to discuss with journalists as they choose.
• No fundraising-driven content. The institution is fee-funded. We do not engage with journalist enquiries seeking impact-narrative content, donor-cultivation material, or sector-promotion writing.
• No deadline-driven commentary on news developments. When something happens in the world — a disaster, a political development, a controversy in the diaspora — we are routinely asked for commentary. Sikhiyas does not provide reactive commentary on news developments. Where we have a substantive position, it appears in a Wisdom Map essay or Directors' Note in due course; it does not appear in next-day press requests.

VI. Quotation And Attribution

Any direct quotation attributed to Sikhiyas, the institution, the Directors, or any named member of the Sikhiyas team must be cleared with the Communications Office before publication. We will not block accurate paraphrase or substantive press freedom; we will, however, request changes to direct quotations that misrepresent the speaker, conflate views, or attribute statements that were not made.

For interview-based pieces, we ask for the following standard arrangements, which are conventional in serious editorial journalism:

• Quotation reviewDirect quotations attributed to Directors are sent for review before publication, with a 48-hour response window. We respond within 24 hours where the journalist's deadline allows.
• Background versus on-the-recordSpecified at the start of any interview, with the journalist's understanding that statements made on background are not for direct citation
• Embargo conventionsWhere Sikhiyas provides material under embargo (typically for advance feature pieces), the embargo is honoured. Breach of embargo terminates the press relationship for the publication concerned
• Correction protocolWhere published material contains factual errors regarding Sikhiyas, we contact the journalist's editor with a correction request, in writing, within five working days of publication. We do not pursue corrections beyond that initial request

VII. What Sikhiyas Is The Right Institutional Voice For

Conversely — and worth saying as clearly as the prohibitions — there are subjects on which Sikhiyas is genuinely the right institutional voice and on which we are happy to engage substantively with journalism that takes the subjects seriously.

• Diaspora Sikh youth formation as a structural question — the institutional gap, the Gurdwara/SSA architecture, the case for sustained year-long formation
• The fee-funded model in youth development as an alternative to the donations-driven NGO model
• The threefold welcome architecture and what cross-tradition partnership looks like in practice — particularly for journalists writing on inter-faith youth work
• The Sikh wisdom-map elements (the cosmology, Halemi Raj, Begampura, Miri-Piri, Chardi Kala) as contemporary intellectual resources, in conversation with the wider tradition of religious-political thought
• The Conceptual Daswandh framework as a contribution to the wider conversation about how religious traditions offer their treasuries forward
• The institutional architecture of community-based service work — particularly the contracted-role discipline and what it does that conventional employment frameworks do not
• The wider GlobalPEACE International network's working philosophy, where Sikhiyas is one constituent voice among others

For these subjects, the engagement we are happy with is the engagement that takes the subjects seriously — long-form features, substantive interviews, scholarly engagement, and the slow journalism that produces work readers return to. We are less well-suited to short news pieces, list articles, or coverage that uses Sikhiyas as a colourful illustration in a story about something else.

VIII. Where We Are Now

An honest note. Sikhiyas is in its early years; the press footprint is small. A small number of substantive features have been published in diaspora Sikh publications and one Indian national publication; one academic paper in a youth-development journal references the programme architecture; the wider press footprint is, appropriately, light. We are not seeking expansion of press coverage as a programme objective.

For journalists encountering Sikhiyas through this page rather than through prior coverage — welcome. The institutional disposition described above is not a function of media-shyness; it is a function of the working ethic the institution operates by. We are happy to engage with serious work that respects the architecture above. We are equally happy to be left alone by less-substantive enquiries, and we treat that as the standard institutional arrangement, not an unusual one.

IX. The Underlying Stance

The press relationship is, in our framing, the same kind of contracted relationship that runs across the rest of Sikhiyas. The journalist's role is loaned to them by their publication and by the journalistic tradition; our institutional role is loaned to us by the Sikh tradition and the community we serve. Both sides operate within their own contracted disciplines. Where the disciplines align — and they often do — substantive work emerges. Where they do not, the engagement does not happen, and that is also fine.

What we will not accept is press engagement that asks us to abandon the disciplines we operate by — participant privacy, restraint on intra-Sikh political questions, refusal of fundraising-driven framing — in service of editorial convenience. The disciplines are non-negotiable not from institutional rigidity but because they are the working architecture by which we keep our actual commitments to the participants and communities we serve. The press kit is the shape that allows serious journalism while protecting those commitments.