By Manmith Kaur | Indonesia |
Gurmat School Indonesia (GSI) was founded by the late Balwant Singh Rahal and Sardarni Kartar Kaur who were extremely concerned about the Sikh values that were beginning to disappear among the Sikh community in Indonesia fearing that soon it would be completely lost.
The school opened its door to its first batch of students on Aug 18, 2013 and since then has been going strong providing Gurmukhi, Gurbani, Kirtan and Punjabi classes to students in Tangerang, located on the western border of Jakarta, and its surrounding areas.
We have monthly Youth Kirtan organized by our students and Gurmat Camps and various other activities such as Sports day, Gurbani Competitions, Clean up drives and also our Vand Chakna program to ensure students learn the Sikh Values through active participation.
Our main goal is to ensure that our students learn the key principles of Sikhi and apply them in their daily lives. When the Covid-19 Pandemic hit the world we continued our learning process through our home based learning programme enabling us to reach not only our existing students, but also students from all over Indonesia such as Palembang, Medan, Malang, Padang and Sukabumi.
On Aug 18, 2023, we celebrated 10 years of Gurmat School Indonesia with our 83 students learning through our offline as well as online programs. We organized various events to mark this special anniversary which included blood drive, vand chakna program with a visit to an orphanage, Naam Rass Kirtan, kirtan & Maa Boli presentations by our online and offline students and Gurmat competition & Gurmat Carnival Games. The competition included various Bani recitation and family quizzes which included Sikh knowledge competitions for all ages. The Kid Gurmat Carnival was a big hit as children played several interactive games that enhanced their Sikhi and Maa Boli.
The blood drive was a great hit amongst our sangat and the local community. The blood drive was also attended by the Deputy Minister of Agrarian Affairs and Spatial Planning Bapak Raja Juli Antoni who was extremely impressed by our simplicity and praised our efforts to serve the community. The school has now made a commitment with Red Cross Indonesia to organize the blood drive every four months.
During these celebrations, we inaugurated the Multi Purpose Room of our school which will be used for various programs of our school and other purposes within our community.
We hope with the continuous support of parents, Sangat and the commitment of our hardworking sevadars together with the blessings of Waheguruji we can continue to nurture young Sikhs to value their Sikh beliefs and grow up to become responsible individuals with high morals.We hope with our consistent growth the future Sikh generation will continue to be motivated to preserve their culture, heritage and most importantly Sikhi in Indonesia.
(Manmith Kaur is the Principal of the Gurmat School of Indonesia)
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