Gursikh Sabha Canada with the support of Ontario Sikhs and Gurdwara Council donated $75,000 for the development to build York University’s new campus in Markham.
According to the members of Gursikh Sabha Canada management committee, this funding will not only benefit the university, but also create new opportunities for Punjabi and Sikh students in the near future.
“Being Sikhs, we have many responsibilities beyond Gurdwaras. The future of our kids depends on education, so it is our duty to contribute to this field.”
Gursikh Sabha Canada management, committee director Gobinder Singh Randhawa
Gurdwara Gursikh Sabha’s committee member, Manjit Singh Parmar, mentioned that Sikh community’s contribution to academics in Canada is very limited. With this kind of financial support, educational institutions can better address the issues related to Sikhism and the Punjabi language.
The director and founding member of Gursikh Sabha Scarborough, Gobinder Singh Randhawa, says that it is because of these contributions from Sikh organizations, that the community gets an opportunity to talk with the universities about the needs of their people and students, which includes the expansion of the Punjabi language in educational institutions.
Members of the York Sikh Students Association welcomed this financial help to their university from Sikh organizations, which will create more avenues for Sikh students.
“They worked hard all their life and now our seniors are passing their wisdom to us.”
Gurjot Singh, York Sikh Students Association
To help underprivileged Sikh students in academics, Ontario Sikhs and Gurdwara Council is initiating a scholarship which they will announce during Vaisakhi. It is worth mentioning that Scarborough’s Sikh community and Gursikh Sabha Gurdwara have been contributing to help local hospitals for the last few years.
In 2019, at Sikh’s first Guru Nanak Dev’s 550th birth anniversary, they gave funding of $35,000 to five hospitals in the Scarborough area. They also donated thousands of dollars to an international non-profit humanitarian organization called Khalsa Aid.
