To say briefly, SikhRI kept on diversifying the ways to reach our audiences, but at the same time deepening the impact of our existing programs.

On September 24, at the University of Maryland, we’ve organized the first diaspora conference in honor of Bhai Vir Singh to celebrate his lifetime achievements. The event was an absolute success — the audience was enthralled with Harinder Singh’s deep knowledge, surprised with Bhai Vir Singh’s influence on Inni Kaur, captivated by Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh’s presentation of Cosmic Symphony, and inspired by Peter Kirn’s deep connection to Bhai Vir Singh’s poetry.

“The British regarded Bhai Vir Singh as a very dangerous man.”– Harinder Singh.

At the conference, we’ve also announced the launch of Love Harp (Prit Vina), an exquisite poem of Bhai Vir Singh that has never before been translated to English. You can pick up a Kindle edition of the book on Amazon today.

Also on September 24, we’ve held another Sikhi & Acceptance panel discussion in Toronto (the first one took place on June 12 in Vancouver, BC), which is our way of engaging the “silent majority”, inviting curious people to ask and get answers to any Sikhi-related questions they may have. We plan on doing more of these in the future.

In August, we wrapped our 14th annual Sidak, a two-week leadership program, which gathered participants from across North America and the UK to expand their understanding of Sikhi. The underlying theme for Sidak 2016 was Love in Sikhi. Our team of facilitators introduced Sikhi inspired poetry and Gurmat Sangit. For many of our participants, this was their first time writing poetry, and I was very delighted to see everyone embrace their inner creativity; it was truly enlightening.

Finally, as you might have noticed, we’ve been gradually rolling out our new identity: visual, in the form of new logo and colours, and verbal, as in our new unified purpose of Illuminating Every Path. We produced a short video to reflect this change. Please take a look and consider sharing on social media to help raise awareness of our work.

We are, of course, also working on all of our existing programs and planning even more initiatives. For example, our new program Nad: Gurmat Sangit Heritage will inspire and engage future generations through Gurmat Sangit, the singing and performing of Gurbani, and offer diverse opportunities, from researching the core aspects of Gurmat Sangit to publishing research papers in leading journals. You can expect to hear more about this in our next quarterly update.Thank you for your support.

With love,

Inni Kaur

P.S. Visit our new website too and let us know what you think.

Sikh Research Institute

http://www.sikhri.org