Lerato Matheka
MASERU — The Face of Lesotho beauty pageant which was scheduled for yesterday was postponed to June 18 due to a lack of funds.
Face of Lesotho organiser Tlali Tlali told XpressPeople on Friday that they had to postpone the pageant after the 12 participants failed to satisfy international demands.
“We had hoped to hold a camp for the girls to test them on different aspects as dictated by global competitions but we failed due to lack of funding,” Tlali said.
“We had to postpone the pageant to allow the girls to go through all the processes.”
Participants needed to demonstrate that they had participated in programmes demonstrating such issues as social responsibility, and public presentation skills.
“We still had a few of these fields to cover to get the girls ready for international pageants before we could hold the finals,” Tlali said.
He said out of the 32 girls recruited from the country’s 10 districts only 12 had survived the gruelling competition.
“Every category is judged and most girls failed dismally on written presentation and general knowledge about what is happening in Lesotho.
“Only 12 girls went through and they are still going to be judged in sections like debate, fashion show and verbal presentation.”
Tlali said the girls gave back to society by cleaning paediatric wards at Queen II Hospital where they were joined by former Miss PC FM Karabelo Mokoallo.
Tlali said the girls would be judged on visual and verbal personal presentation today.
They will also be judged on talent presentation on June 2, he said.
“They will then face a critical category of the competition which is the debate and that will take place on June 8.”
Tlali said the girls are also going to be judged on their public speaking skills and ability to reason. From this session we will also choose Lesotho’s representative at the World Beauty Pageant Association.”
He said out of the 12 participants only four seemed determined to succeed.
Tlali said they are going to be strict in all the categories because “we want to send a (worthy) ambassador to represent Lesotho at international beauty pageants.” The participating girls have already covered the swimwear and the corporate wear categories.
Tlali said their efforts to internationalise Face of Lesotho were being hampered by a lack of adequate funding.
“Thus far we only have two sponsors and it is not enough if we really want Lesotho to be represented at the international level.
“We hope local organisations will lend a hand for the project to succeed. We are opening a channel to what an international pageant is and we are doing it here in Lesotho,” Tlali said.
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