In the past fifteen years, the Miss-Y Pageant has emerged as one of the biggest fund raising drives for the YWCA. And because it’s been such a huge success at home, the “Y” has now gone beyond our borders hoping to attract a similar response through the first ever Ms Y International. The pageant is scheduled to take place on Friday at the Belize City Centre. There will be six contestants vying for the title. The women are between sixty one and seventy six years old and are from Belize, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. Today, 7NEWS caught up with the contestants and their organizers in action at the Belize City Centre.
Sonia Linares, YWCA
“We are hoping, we are hoping it is one of our main goals that it will bring more funds to the Y. We presently are doing a big renovation to our building and also an expansion so that we can provide better service to our women and even to the community on a whole and we need almost $400,000 to complete what we are doing and we are hoping to raise money from this pageant which will assist and also bring awareness to other donors who would like to contribute to the work of the YWCA.”
Birdy Francis, Trainer
“The neat thing about it this year is that they are being represented by the Belizean community abroad so they are coming into represent their Belizean community in the United States so that is one difference. What they are going to do, we are calling embracing our culture as the theme for this pageant and it is going to be all about the culture. The talent is fantastic, the talent this year is just simply fantastic. They have a lot of things to teach and things you might have forgotten but you will remember, all kinds of stuff.”
The women will not only be competing to help raise funds for the Y but besides being crowned Ms Y International the winner will also be awarded among other gifts, a plot of land in the Belama area donated by the Ministry of Lands. The fun gets underway Friday night at seven thirty at the Belize City Centre. Advance tickets can be purchased at the Y.
