Rumbidzai Mhlanga, Sunday Life Reporter
MISS Teen Intellect is preparing for their first coronation night to be held on 15 December at Bulawayo Theatre under the theme, “Let education lead.”
Miss Teen Intellect is a pageant based on education, it is an initiative that is pushing for students in particular to do pageantry and school at the same time. It is was established in a bid to help teenagers discover their talents at the same time pursuing their academic careers.
One of the Miss Teen Intellect finalists Panashe Jecha said the motive behind the initiative was to help students discover what they love apart from school.
“The motive behind Miss Intellect is to create a broad base for teens to find something to do, a career or hobby but at the same time focusing on school. It brings together intelligence and beauty, it is not all about beauty but there are also projects that the girls do to bring change and development in the communities that they live in.”
“There are projects we have been doing to empower the girl child. We aim to bring positive change in the society. The projects include ways to contribute to economic growth, empowering the girl child and self-love. I did the empower the girl child project where I talked to pupils from different schools about issues affecting them, one of the most important issues was not having proper sanitary wear which made them lose self-confidence. We then found donors who helped provide sanitary wear especially for girls who could not afford them as they are costly nowadays,” she said.
The founder and director of Miss Teen Intellect Zimbabwe, Jemima Mandemwa, the current Miss Super Globe Africa and Miss Super Globe World, said the initiative started this year and has been successful so far.
“The whole idea was mooted in April this year when we did auditions, we selected a team of girls from around Zimbabwe with five provinces participating. We had girls coming from Bulawayo Metropolitan, Harare Metropolitan, Mashonaland West, Midlands and Matebeleland South. We want to empower girls to embrace what they are passionate about at the same time concentrating on school. I am an example of that since I am still at school but at the same time doing my modelling career. Our criteria is based on intelligence, beauty, passion and confidence so we got to select 30 girls,” said Miss Mandemwa.
Jemima said since they started, they have achieved more than they thought they would.
“Since we started, I think we have achieved more than we expected we have had a couple of successful events and activities that were of much help to the girls and the communities we live in. We hosted a girl empowerment workshop where we invited girls to come over so we discuss about issues that affect us as girls especially issues to do with sanitary wear and we wrote applications to look for sponsors who can assist girls with sanitary wear and so far we have only one, JCI Khumalo who are helping us with sanitary wear run. We also did a few fundraising events, we had a family fun day and a fashion show and they were both a success,” she said.
Two streams of competition on 14 and 15 December will be held.
“We will have preliminary show on 14 of December where we will remain with our top 20 and then the final one will be on 15 December where we hoping to crown our first Miss Teen Intellect who will further become the ambassador as the Miss Teen Intellect Zimbabwe organisation because we are aiming at making this a long term goal and broadening our platform to empowering the boy child as well, particularly high school students,” said Mandemwa.
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