The Rotary Club of Forfar

04/09/2026

Fun fact: 18 dinner orders is apparently harder to manage than most things Rotary does. Chilli lasagne chaos aside, it was a brilliant night at the club!

President Katharine updated us on community support efforts and a lovely recent evening celebrating local businesses on Castle Street.

Gordon told us about Reengaged, a charity tackling loneliness that’s currently short of volunteer drivers, and Jack gave us the details on the Air Cadets open evening (Thurs 10th Sept, 7:30pm, Loanside Road hall) before the room gave him a huge send-off ahead of starting university this month. Good luck, Jack Leslie

Our guest speaker, Ewen Anderson, then took us on a whistle-stop tour through the history of timekeeping, from sticks in the ground to Julius Caesar, leap years, and why every school has a janitor (thank the Romans). Genuinely one of the funniest, most fascinating talks we’ve had in a while.

It was a good evening.



RT Babajide Olowookere (Public Image Lead)

02/09/2026

President Katharine represented the club in the community this week, joining local celebrations for a Forfar business recently named Curry Restaurant of the Year for North Scotland. A lovely evening of laughter and local pride. Always good to see Forfar businesses being recognised for their hard work!

19/08/2026

What a brilliant evening!

We welcomed Alfie along to tell us all about his week at RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award), and honestly, we came away just as inspired as he was.

Alfie walked us through the highs and lows, from an awkward first evening among total strangers to team challenges like raft-building, blindfolded tasks, and even a talent show that turned into a full-group karaoke session.

The real takeaway was what he learned about leadership: a good leader doesn't need all the answers, just the confidence to bring out the best in the people around them.

Alfie is off to Robert Gordon University this year to study digital marketing, but leadership clearly isn't something he's leaving behind. Between Scouts, church volunteering and now RYLA, he's already living out what "People of Action" means.

Thank you Alfie for such an honest and engaging talk. We wish you every success at university and beyond!

13/08/2026

Forfar Rotary welcomes a New Member

Due to holidays the attendance was low this week but that did not dampen the delight of those in attending to welcome another lady member

Margaret Sabti
Margaret grew up in Glasgow and when she was 17 she trained as a nurse. She specialised in operating theatre nursing and has had a long career in this area having worked alongside some very prominent surgeons including the surgeons who devised the Glasgow coma scale, now used worldwide. Latterly she worked with orthopaedic surgeons in the 1980s , worked in the Middle East for a couple of years.
Margaret moved to Forfar after retiring 5 years ago and she has two sons and a daughter in law all living in Forfar. She is a keen cook and baker and enjoys crochet and knitting, loves live theatre, music concerts and belongs to a theatre group who go on haunts by bus to various live theatre and musicals. She enjoys travelling and visiting different places both at home and abroad.
Since retiring she likes to go travelling as often as she can and after her induction by President Katherine, can now add Rotary to her favourite pastimes as she looks forward to becoming involved in various activities and events as well as the social side of thing too.
I think we have in Margaret we have another member with an enthusiasm to be involved in all things Rotary.

03/08/2026

Fifty-five years, hold your breath for a second and let that sink in.

Recently, we had the pleasure of presenting Danny with his Long Service Award, marking 55 years as a member of the Rotary Club of Forfar. Fifty-five years of turning up, pitching in and being one of the good ones. If there’s a more Rotary way to spend half a century, I’ve yet to hear it.

Danny joined the club back in 1971 and never really slowed down. He served as Club President in 1981/82, was awarded a Paul Harris Fellowship in 2019 (Rotary’s highest accolade, for anyone who needs reminding, and I certainly did when I first started this job), and was made an Honorary Member in 2023 in recognition of everything he’s given the club over the years.

Away from Rotary, Danny built and ran his own multi-million-pound seed distribution business, trading right across the North and East of Scotland, so his working week was every bit as full as his Rotary calendar. When he wasn’t running a company or attending a club, he was out on the golf course or the curling rink, by all accounts a keen and pretty handy competitor at both.

Fifty-five years is not a number you stumble into. It takes genuine commitment, decade after decade, through changing presidents, changing projects and no doubt the occasional changing of the guard at the bar. Danny’s given us all of that, and we’re hugely grateful for it.

Congratulations Danny, and thank you for 55 remarkable years of service.

Comment congratulations Danny, in the comments and we will show him.

22/07/2026

A new Rotary year is underway, and there's plenty to look forward to.

With President Katharine now at the helm for 2026/27, the diary is already filling up. The Thursday Club, our youth initiatives and the Santa Sleigh will all be back, planning is stirring for next year's Strathmore Classic Car Tour, and in August we're throwing the doors open for Membership Month. If you've ever been curious about Rotary, this is your year.

https://forfarrotary.co.uk/join

Katharine knows this club inside out (21 years a member, if you can believe it) and we could not be in better hands.

Curious how the handover evening went? The full story, including a few laughs at Mike's expense, is on our blog:

https://forfarrotary.co.uk/blog/handover-2026

11/07/2026

11/07/2026

We are delighted to be supporting the 50th Annual Scottish Transport Extravaganza this year!

Don't forget to wear a smile today as well 😄

See you all soon!

09/07/2026

Picture Perfect: our own Babajide Olowookere (Public Image Lead) ran a photography masterclass at this week's meeting, and it was brilliant.

Quick-fire question to kick things off: how many photos are on your phone right now? A few answers came back in the thousands... then Babajide topped them all with his own count: a jaw-dropping 63,365.

Then the real lesson: four volunteers, two photos. One posed lineup, one natural conversation. The difference was obvious in seconds, no slide needed.

Six words to remember before you next pick up a camera at a club event: story, action, eyes, diversity, space, consent.

Read the full recap on our blog: https://forfarrotary.co.uk/blog/picture-perfect-photography-masterclass

02/07/2026

New Presidents first inductee.
It was our new Presidents pleasant duty to induct our latest recruit to the ranks of Forfar Rotary after Rotarian Ian Findlay officially introduced her to the club membership.
Sandra McCourt has now retired from the police force where she was heavily involved with her duties as you can read from the next section of this report.
During my time in the job, I enjoyed numerous departments including community Policing, CID, Child protection and latterly Intelligence. My heart was always in community policing.
I won numerous awards as a Police officer including the BAWP (British Association of Women in Policing) award for my community involvement. And through winning this I was automatically put forward to the IAWP (International Association of Women in Policing) Award and won that too. So for a moment in time, I was the world’s best community police officer. It was a bit unfortunate, but I had to travel to Darwin in Australia to pick this up! I also ran with the Queens Commonwealth baton and was recently awarded an MBE in the Kings New years honours list 2026.

So the Police loss is Rotary’s gain and I am sure in the short time I have known her there is so much more to come now that her feet are firmly under the table.