Rotaract President Shagun Dhanania

The St Andrews Rotary Club’s guest speaker was Shagun Dhanania, President of Rotaract, an organisation affiliated to Rotary International for young people over 18. Shagun, from Hyderabad in India, is currently a 3rd year student of Biology and Psychology at St Andrews. Her talk was about herself and how she is coping with lock-down through her many and varied activities and hobbies.

Main hobbies are reading, dancing, cooking and learning Spanish. Although she read a lot as a child, the habit had waned but now she aims to read a book per month. So far her stand out recommendations are; The Alchemist; To Kill a Mocking Bird; Man’s Search for Meaning and The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Shagun returned to India earlier this year to attend her cousin’s wedding where she enjoyed one of her other hobbies, dancing. Two years ago she went to India with another Rotaractor, Lyndsey, to work in the school for abandoned girls that the Club supports. Among their many educational duties, they taught the children to dance as demonstrated in a delightful video clip. Teaching children to dance comes easily to Shagun, who taught youth groups previously and participated in dance competitions. Both she and Lyndsey keep in touch with the school to see how they are faring during lockdown.

While in India she also developed her culinary skills, which probably stands her in good stead for her part-time job in an Indian Restaurant in St Andrews.

Shagun is Head of Events for the University’s Rag Week and has participated herself in several fund-raising dares, for charity, including standing on her hands while putting on a T-shirt, with a video clip to prove it!.

Shagun is also head of the South Asian Sanskrit Society but, thanks to Zoom, she is able to handle most of her activities efficiently in one spot. One of these is to further develop Rotaract with a push to get it affiliated with the University.

She is coping with on-line learning by studying within a bubble of fellow students and is grateful for the efforts that University teaching staff make to compensate for lack of face to face teaching.

Past President John Christie proposed the vote of thanks.Rotaract is an important part of our Club's link with the student population which is so important to St Andrews.

When in her first year at St Andrews University, Shagun was chosen by the Rotaract Club for an internship to the School for Abandoned Girls in India.

Now in her 3rd year, Covid disrupted her year as President so she will remain President for this year also.

Before Covid cut the year short she selected 2 students for the India School internship after a series of interviews of 24 applicants.