Seven stunning and vivacious ladies will grace the stage tonight at the National Cultural Centre (NCC) for the Miss Emancipation Pageant. Each of them will be given the opportunity to showcase her intelligence and elegance but only the best will walk away with the crown and title.
The contestants are: Patrina Cummings, Feliciann Elliot, Gabrielle Cummings, Tandika Moore, Sithendisi Cameron, Shelisa Depradine and Colleen Bovell.
The first edition of the Miss Emancipation Pageant was held in 2012. However, since 2015-2024 was declared International Decade for People of African Descent, the pageant has been centred on this. The contestants, as is the norm in this particular pageant, are tasked with creating their own spoken word renditions to introduce themselves.
National Director of the Miss Emancipation Organization Melissa Varswyk said that this year’s pageant brings an added delight where all seven contestants will be escorted onstage by a robot. The women have been trained via Skype by US-based Robotic Engineer Terrence Southern. Southern is the Global Lead Robotics and Automation Engineer at GE Global Research. As a renowned leader in robotics and artificial intelligence, Southern is said to be the chief person responsible for robotic and animation project strategies across the GE business portfolio inclusive of research, system and application development, testing and manufacturing system project management and installation. The contestants have been learning techniques in coding the robots and will be expected to do so to enable their robots in accompanying them onstage. While onstage, each contestant will be questioned by the judges in respect to their projects. The young woman who scores the highest in this category will automatically be placed in the top four.
Preparation for the pageant began in May and during this time all seven women would have attended lectures given by Dr Norman Ng-A-Qui of Cuffy 250 Committee and Melissa. The lectures would have provided them with information on African history. The Question and Answer Segment will see them being questioned on the history they would have learnt.
The other categories are Business Attire, Evening Gown and Final Question. Only the top four will answer the final question. While the scores would have been compounded to allow for the three contestants with the top scores to join their peer who automatically made the round, their scores will be wiped clean and the one who secures the most points in this round will be crowned queen.
All seven contestants have been through rigorous training to prepare for tonight. Their training was done by Marva Langevine (Miss Emancipation runner-up 2014), Latisha Chan (Miss Emancipation contestant 2014) and Delisha Wright (Miss Emancipation 2016).
The title last year was won by Amaniah Cort who will be crowning the new queen tonight.
The show begins at 8 pm. Tickets can be purchased at the NCC at the cost of $1,000 and $2,000.
