UK Sikhs donate £125 m to charity every year

Sarika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 27

The Sikh langar feeding the UK’s homeless has caught the international media’s attention over the past two years. Now, a new report has revealed that British Sikhs donate £125 million (around Rs 935 crore) to charity every year.

According to British Sikh Report 2016 that was released in the UK recently, the community spends over 65 million hours each year on voluntary activities.

With the aim of compiling British Sikhs’ views on various aspects of life, this latest in the series of annual reports recorded the responses of over 1,400 respondents spread across the UK, making it the largest community sample to date. The survey was primarily carried out online; an effort was also made to supplement the sample with a paper questionnaire to reach those without internet access.

The survey found that it is common for a Sikh to be involved in community service.

It was found that 64 per cent of the community engages in some volunteering work. About 40 per cent spare one hour to five hours per week for voluntary activities, including seva at a gurdwara, while more than two per cent spend over 25 hours on such activities.

“Sikhs spend about 200 hours per year on voluntary activities, on an average,” the study observed.

As many as 93 per cent of the Sikh respondents said they donated money to charity every month. Just 7 per cent said they were not involved in donation.

Over half of them said that they donated £1 (about Rs 95) to £20 (Rs 1,900 approximately) every month, and there were seven per cent who donated more than £100 (Rs 9,500) per month.

The report observed that Sikhs in Britain donated around £380 (around Rs 36,000) each per year to charity, on an average.

Earlier in news reports that had appeared in the British media, The Sikh Federation UK had estimated that around 5,000 meals were now served to non-Sikhs by Britain’s 250 gurdwaras every week. It said the meals had been a lifeline for homeless people and overseas students swamped in debt.