De­siree McEachrane

At 52, with her funky dread­locks and face bare of make­up, Stephne Bell may not look like your typ­i­cal beau­ty queen. But her vol­un­teer work with young peo­ple and sin­gle moth­ers in her home coun­try qual­i­fied her to be se­lect­ed as Miss Ja­maica Elite Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) In­ter­na­tion­al last year. This year, Bell is the UN Pageant In­ter­na­tion­al's am­bas­sador for the Caribbean and she's look­ing for women from this coun­try to par­tic­i­pate in the T&T leg of the pageant. The UN Pageant In­ter­na­tion­al has been around since 1996, and last year's pageant was held at the Ritz Carl­ton Ho­tel in Mon­tego Bay, Ja­maica, Bell said. While phys­i­cal beau­ty and poise are still fac­tors, the main cri­te­ria for the pageant's win­ner is a sense of per­son­al ac­com­plish­ment, strong com­mit­ment to vol­un­teer work and her de­ter­mi­na­tion to con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to those less for­tu­nate than her­self.

"We take women from all back­grounds," Bell ex­plained. "You don't have to come straight from any­body's cook­ie cut­ter mold to par­tic­i­pate. How you car­ry your­self and your love for hu­man­i­ty will be enough." With the help of T&T's Miss Plus Size Pageant di­rec­tor Roger Tay­lor Mar­ti­no, Bell is in Trinidad to choose the first T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tives for this pageant. Five women will be se­lect­ed to rep­re­sent T&T in five dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. Del­e­gates in the Teen Miss (ages 13 to 17) and the Miss cat­e­go­ry (ages18 to 29) must be sin­gle and have no chil­dren. How­ev­er, the Ms (ages 30 to 49), Mrs (ages 21 to 49) and Ms Elite (ages 50 and up) al­low moth­ers, wives and ma­ture women a chance to par­tic­i­pate in the pageant's pos­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment.

"When women get to a cer­tain age, they tend to want to roll over and die. We want to take them away from that kind of think­ing, show them that life is just be­gin­ning. They can help to groom the younger ones com­ing up. This pageant has the po­ten­tial to show­case what women are do­ing for them­selves, their chil­dren and their com­mu­ni­ties." Tal­ent and Cos­tume night is set for May 2, at a venue that is still to be con­firmed. The fi­nal crown­ing will be held on June 19. Pageant win­ners will go on to rep­re­sent T&T at the in­ter­na­tion­al pageant in Ja­maica on Ju­ly 18, all ex­pens­es paid. Bell her­self has been work­ing tire­less­ly in Ja­maica, hold­ing self de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes for the youth and par­ent­ing class­es for young sin­gle moth­ers.

"I ded­i­cat­ed my­self to par­ent­ing the youth," she said. "They are not re­al­ly get­ting the love and nur­tur­ing that they de­serve and that's what's caus­ing the rise in crime and vi­o­lence. My two chil­dren grew up in a volatile com­mu­ni­ty in Ja­maica, and they're such sweet chil­dren. You can be liv­ing there, but you don't have to adopt the lifestyle. All this has to do with par­ent­ing, so I know that our youth can be bet­ter." She's been in Trinidad since Oc­to­ber, how­ev­er, and she's ob­served that the same so­cial ills that ex­ist in Ja­maica al­so ex­ist here. So Bell is reg­is­ter­ing an NGO here called Proac­tive Par­ents Foun­da­tion In­ter­na­tion­al that will cre­ate sup­port groups for par­ents rais­ing at-risk youth and a space for at-risk youth to de­vel­op them­selves.

Proac­tive Par­ents in­tends to raise funds with T shirt sales; Bell her­self mod­elled one sam­ple with a funky red 'Live, love, life' lo­go on the front. "I de­cid­ed to stand up and not ac­cept what is go­ing on around me," she said adamant­ly about the so­cial prob­lem of at-risk youth. "We can do some­thing about this as moth­ers."����� Ap­pli­ca­tions are still open for women who are in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the UN Pageant In­ter­na­tion­al, Bell said. And even though on­ly the best of the del­e­gates will be cho­sen to rep­re­sent T&T, Bell in­tends to en­cour­age the oth­er del­e­gates to get in­volved in more struc­tured vol­un­teerism and in form­ing sup­port groups for each oth­er. "Be­cause they have a heart and want to make a dif­fer­ence," Bell added.

More In­fo

For more in­for­ma­tion on the UN Pageant In­ter­na­tion­al,

call 378-7125,

771-2314 or

e-mail stefb24@ya­hoo.com.