The Miss World Beauty Pageant has been known for many things over the years. It is famous for glamour, beauty and fashion. Countries around the world court the global beauty pageant, for the international media spotlight and industry it brings. It’s long history combined with the prestige of wearing the coveted Miss World Crown make it a truly international spectacle, watched by millions around the world. The Pageant has also had its fair share of controversies, especially given the fact that it was a globalized event even before the world understood what globalization meant. Simply put, Miss World is the international stage for celebrating the feminine. Yet when you take the time to speak with Julia Morley, the kind and inspirational Chairman and CEO of the Miss World Organization, you immediately discover that the Miss World Pageant is so much more.
Miss World is at its heart a global platform that makes the dreams, aspirations and power of young women a reality. It is female empowerment, not the glamour itself that cocoons the soul of Miss World today, making the festival happily infectious and joyous for all who are touched by it. Julia often speaks publicly about the importance of recognizing the amazingly talented and brilliant ladies behind the Crown, and thus to ‘humanize Miss World,’ is undoubtedly one of her greatest legacies. That is why the world expects and truly does get ‘magic’ from the famous beauty pageant.
Beauty with a Purpose
Amongst all the different rounds of competitions and events that Miss World contestants must go through to reach the Crown, there is one task that defines and highlights each contestant the most called ‘Beauty with a Purpose’ (BWAP). Established by Julia in 1972, Beauty with a Purpose motivates young women to create or support important charity causes around the globe and sits at the very heart of Miss World. Over the last 52 years it has changed the lives of millions. Each year Miss World contestants, with the help of their national organisations, set up ‘Beauty With A Purpose’ projects, with each contestant choosing a project close to their heart. The contestants work for the BWAP project, giving them the opportunity to use their abilities to make a real and lasting contribution to the world, especially in their home countries.
These projects are presented at Miss World, where the judges, who have the unenviable job of looking through all of them to pick the best projects, ultimately select the project that wins the ‘Beauty With A Purpose Award’. Beauty With A Purpose is the highest recognition a contestant can achieve in Miss World, and signals the underlying shift in the organisation – from beauty pageant to a global humanitarian programme focusing on the most sick and disadvantaged people in the world. Every crowning of Miss World is the start of a new chapter of the Beauty with a Purpose Project. The secret to the project lies in the economies of scale, how many people can the project tangibly help, and it is through the BWAP project that Miss World transcends conventional beauty competitions, embracing a new ethos centered on empowering women through philanthropy and service.
As the 71st Miss World Festival comes to India after 28 long years, the prelaunch conference was hosted in New Delhi at Hotel The Ashok. It witnessed a remarkable moment in the pageants history with a dazzling lineup of Miss Worlds including the Reigning Miss World Karolina Bielawska (2021) along with former Miss World winners Toni-Ann Singh (2019), Vanessa Ponce De Leon (2018), Manushi Chillar (2017), and Stephanie Del Valle (2016) — coming together for the first time, to set the stage for the Grand Finale. At the event, hearing the passion and conviction of all 5 Miss Worlds on the importance of Beauty with a Purpose, we decided to cover their own BWAP projects in detail, showcasing this magnificent ‘heart’ of Miss World to a global readership.
Miss World Karolina Bielawska 2021
Dignity and Community for all
Even before winning Miss World 2021, Karolina was a bold, striking and positively ambitious lady and this has never changed. She considers herself an achiever, focusing on tangible goals and achieving them as much as possible. It is striking that she openly admits that she is greedy with her ambitions and doesn’t settle for anything less, a powerful character trait that men usually voice out loud, but women are hesitant to admit. Karolina not only openly talks about it but wears it with Pride. It is easy to identify her with ‘excellence’ a brand that she cherishes as she knows excellence makes you unforgettable.
This ambition and drive for excellence is reflected in her Beauty with a Purpose project which tackles the homelessness crisis in Poland and stands for equality, fighting poverty, exclusion and homelessness. Karolina helps people in the homelessness crises as well as raises awareness of this problem in Poland and internationally. On Sundays she serves homeless people with food, hot meals, clothing and medical support. What sets her project apart is the trust, understanding and respect that underlines all the relationships built through the project. This is something Karolina feels is really important as oftentimes the immediate basic needs overrun the long time partnership that is required to solve homelessness. According to her the real poverty is being unappreciated, uncared for and unloved, which is something that no person should suffer, but homeless people are forced to endure on a daily basis. She believes the code of indifference melts in front of acts of kindness and she has gone out and shown it. In a truly remarkable achievement, Karolina managed to provide homeless people with vaccines during the COVID-19 Pandemic, saving the lives of many.
She has also built the first Social Bathroom for people in homeless crises in Poland. The bathroom not only helps homeless people to take a shower and wash their clothes but also prevents health problems from a lack of hygiene. It ensures that through good personal hygiene homeless people regain the confidence to be active participants in society, build relationships and engage with people. Till now due to lack of hygiene options, homeless people were forced into isolation, as they felt simply afraid of reaching out and not looking presentable. Social Bathrooms allow homeless people to begin each day with dignity, a basic right that every person deserves in the world.
Karolina is also doing workshops with children, to raise their passions and spirits to help society by inspiring them with her own life story and lessons. In her beauty with a Purpose video released by Miss World, Karolina had stated that “change always begins with a personal decision, because love isn’t just a feeling, its also a choice.” And for all the peo- ple she’s helped, all the lives she’s touched, this work is her choice. I suspect leading this societal change, bringing joyous smiles on the faces of thousands of people she’s helped, more than the Miss World Crown itself, is what will stay with her heart forever, as her legacy; for service has taught her purpose and purpose has strengthened her with meaning.
Miss World Toni-Ann Singh 2019
Creating a home together
“If the door is open, I’ll walk through it” this is what Toni-Ann Singh stated in her post coronation interview on live TV in 2019. And what better words are there to describe Miss World 2019 than these, even today. Toni-Ann with her mesmerizing voice has a unique ability to light up even the darkest of rooms. With her sincerity, passion and roots evident in the way she reaches audiences worldwide, she continues to inspire many many young girls to follow in her footsteps. Her most striking feature is that she wears her heart proudly on her sleeves and has a fabulous audacity to dream, unwilling to ‘change her colors for you [or anyone]’ as the famous line from her Miss World song goes.
She holds the title of the longest Reigning Miss World in the history of the Pageant (due to the COVID-19 Pandemic) and hails from the parish of St. Thomas, Jamaica. Deeply proud of her heritage and passionate about education and faith, Toni-Ann became the face of Beauty With a Purpose. She has used the platform to advocate for numerous causes, including education, women’s empowerment, and mental health. Her dedication to education and community serve as an example of the power of leadership and service. Her Beauty with a Purpose project was and continues to be all about bringing opportunities she has had to young girls in her community and around the world.
The soul of her project is in making sure everyone feels they have a community, a home. As humans we all need community, a place to belong, and that is what she strives to build. Her own experiences as a young immigrant student studying in America have deeply influenced her and she is a force, hard at work, creating a family and a network that can sustain young girls, through good and bad. She has skilled young girls in career building, sexual education, mental health awareness and personal hygiene and having been deeply inspired by her mother, she understands that women are the heart of any community. Toni-Ann has worked with exploited teenagers, protecting and nudging their goals and dreams, making them believe in themselves once again. For her, the power of women and their emotional intelligence is what sets them apart from men. She sees in her mother, like most of us do, that inspirational unsung superhero, who builds not just families but entire communities and nations. It is this personal touch that she brings to Miss World, enveloping everyone in a sense of family and togetherness. Because for Toni-Ann, every women is a Queen, every young girl is worthy and she thrives in making sure they all know it.
Miss World Vanessa Ponce De Leon 2018
Creating a Home Together
Vanessa’s life has been Beauty with a Purpose, long before she wore the Miss World Crown. She was working with charities for over half a decade, before entering the Pageant and has found a purpose to her beauty in the field, empowering young children and women in Mexico. In fact she had two BWAP projects – the first being her work on health, nutrition and education for indigenous Mexican communities, particularly children and the second was her work with a rehabilitation center for girls, who have fallen into drug abuse and addiction.
As the oldest winner of the Miss World title, Vanessa exudes a powerful sense of confidence and ease with herself that is hard to miss or deny. Talking to her, one immediately wants to engage with her sharp intelligence and experienced views on how to build a better world together. For her, Miss World was never simply a competition, not even a pageant; rather it was and is a sisterhood; and she cherishes being part of something so powerfully feminine and universal. Her willingness to learn from the other ladies of the Miss World Family and her innate sense of admiration and respect for each of them is what makes her a truly spectacular Miss World. Her long fight to break the scarcity cycle in Mexico has only made Vanessa stronger, fuller and a more observant to the difficult realities of our world.
She recognizes the overwhelming support and love she has received from the Mexican people and globally, just as all Miss Worlds do, but this support and love also holds a deep sense of personal responsibility for her. Years of working on the ground in Mexico, amongst indigenous communities and girls suffering from drug addiction, have shown her just how scared yet resilient people are. She carries their solemn responsibility with her, something that is openly reflected in her eyes, as she works hard to ensure that she can create safe places in the communities where children can be kids again.
Her work with indigenous communities in Mexico has involved empowering many of their members, who technically “do not exist on paper” as they have no legal documents, and thus no rights. They are forced to live as ‘Foreigners in their own land’, working under the hot sun to scrape a living. In these communities, she particularly helps in preventing permanent harm and damage to young children. In the rehab center, her focus is to give the girls and women, who are aged 13 to 65 years, their dignity. She is currently building a factory to provide employment to these women, because such girls are excluded from society and keep falling back into drugs because the world is too hard for them. Through the factory, Vanessa is trying to create a safe place for them, where they can become their own women and choose their own destiny; and not be financially dependent upon men.
Her desire to just be herself, both in work and in life, is true woman empowerment. More powerful and amazing than the superheroes of Disney and marvel, Vanessa is the real life superwoman, working on tackling some of the most serious and damaging issues of Mexican society. She is the superhero many young girls look up to in the world today, even as her heart belongs to the little kids whose precious smiles light up her heart.
Miss World Manushi Chhillar 2017
Nari Shakti, The Ultimate Power
Often called the Indian Beauty Queen with a heart of Gold, Manushi Chhillar has started a visible menstrual hygiene revolution in India, working on ‘period poverty’ as her Beauty with a Purpose Project. Being a doctor, trained dancer, actress and humanitarian, Manushi is an all-rounder who has empowered hundreds of thousands of girls and built their confidence by providing them dignity through sanitary pads. Her infectious smile and bold persona make her the idol for millions of young girls, especially in India and this much is clear – Manushi has not disappointed.
She personifies real female courage and intense passion, taking the crisis of menstrual hygiene to the highest government forums, particularly in a patriarchal society like India. Her Beauty with a Purpose project titled – Project Shakti – which means ‘Ultimate Power’ is centered on menstruation, awareness and hygiene. It is no secret that in India, from the time a girl hits puberty, she is judged for what she wears, where she goes and who she meets. In an environment such as this, one can only imagine the myths and shame associated with something as natural as menstruation. Manushi took this ‘taboo’ issue head-on, going to the remotest villages and communities in India, and providing dignity to women and young girls through the simple and kind gesture of making sanitary pads available.
The use of sanitary pads gives dignity to women and young girls who regain control over their lives, their schedules and their individuality. Manushi has always believed that “when you do something, you need to have a purpose to it. Otherwise it is not worth doing.” With over 200 million women in India lacking awareness of menstrual hygiene, and India accounting for 27% of the world’s cervical cancer deaths each year, Manushi’s Beauty with a Purpose project has been a driving force of purpose, becoming a game changer across the country. Using the prestige, glamour and spotlight of her title, she has awakened state government’s across the country to this serious crisis in women’s health and done a marvellous job of ensuring that young girls in India and around the world can feel at ease with their bodies and minds.
In a land where ‘women are worshipped as Gods’, she has ensured that women no longer view menstruation as something to be ashamed off. Rather it has now become their strength. Till date, the reasons for lack of use of sanitary pads in India were their high costs, limited availability and lack of awareness, something Manushi has worked on consistently, even teaming up with Indian Bollywood Superstar Akshay Kumar to promote awareness on menstrual hygiene. Her work has resulted in the Government of Haryana, the northern Indian state from where Manushi hails, to declaring and ensuring the free availability of sanitary napkins for all girls in the government schools of the state.
Manushi is India’s fourth Beauty with a Purpose winner at Miss World and the first woman to win Miss World and Beauty with a Purpose jointly. As Miss World, she visited the slums of Kolkata as well as Dharavi in Mumbai – which is one of the world’s largest slums. Internationally, as a result of her work, machines that manufacture low cost and compostable sanitary pads were installed in Nelson Mandela’s birthplace Mvezo in South Africa. She has also expanded the scope of the BWAP project, initiating awareness on HIV, AIDS amongst rural Indian women and initiated an awareness program to prevent and fight leprosy, with the aim of teaching people about the early signs of the disease and the ways to seek treatment.
Manushi firmly believes that having periods is a women’s strength and shouldn’t limit women in anyway. Through sanitary pads, all girls are able to get equal opportunities, and who knows, maybe the next Miss World will come from amongst one of the young girls who have benefitted from this powerful revolution she has sparked.
Miss World Stephanie Del Valle 2016
A Choir of Angels
The indomitable spirit of children and the love for taking care of young minds is reflected in all that Stephanie does. She has been one of the most successful Miss Worlds in the pageants seven decade long history, having raised a record breaking 40 Million US dollars for Beauty with a Purpose, an unprecedented amount by all measures! In January of 2018, Miss World made her the first ever Beauty with a Purpose Ambassador, allowing her to continue traveling and helping children all over the world.
Stephanie is a busy multi-talented lady, with a hunger to prove that her heart’s in the right place. Having a career in singing and worked in theatre, she has honed her passion for music and given it a focus through her Beauty with a Purpose project – A Choir of Angels. In Puerto Rico she worked on creating awareness about Down syndrome, an unmet need in the country. Working with an NGO, she pioneered a special musical therapy curriculum for children affected by the Down syndrome disorder. Stephanie’s trailblazing approach was to give the gift of music to her ‘little angels’ [the children], by creating musical programmes for these children, who were aged 2 years and older, with the help of certified teachers. Promoting wellness and the development of the children’s physical, cognitive emotional and social skills, she was able to give the little angels a voice and the confidence to use it! It is scientifically proven that musical therapy causes positive changes in behavior and helps in emotional, physical, cognitive and social areas and Stephanie combined her wit, compassion and knowledge to change the lives of these children forever. Stephanie herself has been taken aback by just how powerful a medium music has proved to be in the lives of the little angels. None of the children she worked with were able to speak, and through music, by learning how to sing, learning how to read sheet-music and playing simple musical instruments, she gave them agency. One of her little angels – Lilly, who is now 11 years old, loves to sing, finding a joy she never had before. Stephanie admits that she is not able to work with the children as much as she would like too, particularly being a model in New York now, but even in the Big Apple she has made a powerful impression, becoming the first plus size model at a major fashion agency. Currently she is a go-to Curve model, wearing brands that speak to “today’s active woman,” independent and fashion forward.
Stephanie’s beautiful experience was not only to teach her little angels but also learn from their spirit and strength, adding true beauty to her wonderful purpose.
Together the 5 Miss Worlds epitomize the best of Beauty with a Purpose, having individually and collectively changed the lives of so many girls, children and women at a fundamental level. They are part of a revolution, which is transforming the world one chapter at a time, with each new Miss World bringing new energy, talent and innovations to the Miss World sisterhood.
As India gets ready to host the 71st Miss World Festival, it is going to be a spectacular star-studded majestic affair by all accounts. The competition lineup during the festival includes:
1. Beauty With A Purpose Presentations at Plenary Hall, Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi on 21st February.
2. Head-To-Head Challenge Final at The Summit Room, Bharat Mandapam, New Delhi on 23rd February.
3. Miss World Sport Challenge, New Delhi on 25th February
4. World Top Designer Award & Miss World Top Model, Mumbai on 2nd March
5. Miss World Talent Final, Mumbai on 3rd March
6. Multimedia Challenge – will run throughout the festival program.
7. Miss World Red Carpet Special at Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai on 9th March
8. 71st Miss World Final at Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai with the Global Telecast Live from 7:30pm – 10:30pm on 9th March.
It is the Publication’s hope and endeavour that amidst the glitz and glamour of stunning models and fashion on the world stage, the heart and soul of Miss World – Beauty with a Purpose shines extraordinarily bright, shedding light on the darkest of areas and issues of our planet. With millions of young girls around the world set to watch the 71st Miss World with rapt attention and dreamy eyes, the pageant’s Beauty with a Purpose is the perfect platform to discovering just how much power, poise and passion the new contestants, hailing from 120 different countries, wield. For the future is truly feminine!
