The Miss Cayman pageant has not been held since 2011
Government has to come up with $10,000 franchise money before Miss Cayman 2015 can enter the 2016 Miss Universe contest.
The Miss Cayman Committee officially announced the final 10 contestants for the 2015 Miss Cayman contest to be held Jan. 31 next year at a press conference at the Government Administration Building on Thursday.
At the press briefing, Tourism Minister Moses Kirkconnell said the next Miss Universe pageant takes place on Jan 18, two weeks before Miss Cayman pageant.
“We are hopeful that the Miss Universe pageant would grant us the franchise for the following year, 2016,” he said, adding that the franchise costs $10,000.
The Miss Cayman pageant has not been held since 2011 due to lack of funding but this year government budgeted $50,000 to host the pageant, as well as provide a scholarship prize for the winner.
Commending the committee on finding contestants, Mr. Kirkconnell said the staging of the Miss Cayman pageant should be embraced by the community and viewed as a public/private partnership.
“Government has invested as much as it can this year but without the support of the private sector and the wider community, we will not have the level of success that we have enjoyed in previous years,” he said.
Derri Dacres-Lee, chairperson of the Miss Cayman Committee, said training programs were in place to make sure the Miss Cayman participants were well prepared for the contest.
“The committee has planned to do a few things differently this year,” she said. “We will be bringing back the Minister’s Black Tie Ball, which was very popular in the past, as well as having the girls participate in the Pirates Week Parade.”
Ms. Dacres-Lee also said the event had about 20 sponsors and quite a few new ones had come on board.
Mr. Kirkconnell said sponsorships had been received from law firms, radio stations, jewelry stores and gym establishments, indicating that there was a wide interest from across the community for the pageant.
Some of the benefits for companies that might want to sponsor a contestant, Ms. Dacres-Lee said, included corporate packages, tickets to the event, and business exposure during the pageant.
The platform for the contest this year is the Cayman Islands Cancer Society.
Heather Bodden, past president and a stalwart of the Miss Cayman pageant, said the contest is a benefit to the Cayman Islands. “It has been three years since a pageant was held and Cayman is ready for a new queen,” she said.
Ms. Bodden said the Miss Cayman contest was not just about beauty.
“The benefits of these girls is they have a large amount of intelligence. They are being offered a scholarship to enhance their education and a lot of former Miss Cayman contestants have gone on to become lawyers and other high-profile [individuals] in the community,” she said.
The contestants in the 2015 Miss Cayman pageant are: Anika Conolly, Tonie Chisholm, Jenique Smith, Stephanie Scott, Latrese Haylock, Mahalia Seymour, Schilo Scott, Kamala Murugesu, Emily Bodden and Adrianna Christian.
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