Beau­ty and glam­our comes to the fore this week­end when fran­chise-hold­ers for the Trinidad &?To­ba­go leg of the Miss Uni­verse Pageant stages the semi­fi­nal to­day, at 2 pm, at Hilton Trinidad, Port-of-Spain. Pri­or to the semis a cast­ing call, sched­uled for 9 am, takes place at the same venue. Lo­cal hope­fuls will be joined this af­ter­noon by the three suc­cess­ful To­ba­go del­e­gates-Kim­ber­ly Sergeant, Mary Es­dek­lle, Davia Cham­bers. Fol­low­ing an in­tense three-week train­ing pe­ri­od ten women will ad­vance to the fi­nal of the pageant tak­ing place on Oc­to­ber 7, al­so at the Hilton. The can­di­date even­tu­al­ly crowned as Miss Trinidad and To­ba­go will rep­re­sent the na­tion at the In­ter­na­tion­al Miss Uni­verse Pageant 2012 that is sched­uled to come off ear­ly in De­cem­ber. Dean Ackin, founder of the Tribe Mas Band, now holds the lo­cal Miss Uni­verse fran­chise and, to­geth­er with his team from Tribe, and its spin­off event pro­duc­tion out­fit, Ul­ti­mate Events, has re­brand­ed and stream­lined the lo­cal leg of the com­pe­ti­tion. Tribe is em­ploy­ing its cre­ative en­ter­prise in mas pro­duc­tion and the ex­per­tise in event lo­gis­tics of Ul­ti­mate Events to pro­duce an event of­fer­ing grand pageantry, ex­cite­ment and vary­ing facets of beau­ty.

Com­ment­ing on this new en­ter­prise, Ackin said, "When we de­cid­ed to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Miss Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­verse we knew there was a lot of ground to cov­er in re-es­tab­lish­ing the pro­file of the pageant here. One of the main ad­van­tages we have is the syn­er­gy be­tween Tribe and Ul­ti­mate Events in which we have a lot of ex­per­tise need­ed in-house. Tribe has al­so al­ways been about pro­vid­ing young peo­ple with op­por­tu­ni­ties to de­vel­op their tal­ent and so we have as­sem­bled a youth­ful team to work on Miss Uni­verse bring­ing to the ta­ble fresh ideas and in­no­va­tion." Pulling it all to­geth­er is for­mer Miss T&T Leah-Mari Gue­vara, who is the pageant co­or­di­na­tor, lead­ing a hand­picked pro­duc­tion team com­pris­ing of peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enced in the are­na along with new­com­ers with great promise. Gue­vara led the team to To­ba­go where the first three young ladies to com­pete in the semi­fi­nal were cho­sen from dozens that at­tend­ed the cast­ing at the Mag­dale­na Grand Ho­tel. Along with those men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly the judg­ing pan­el will al­so in­clude Chris­t­ian Bou­caud (fash­ion de­sign­er); Monique No­bre­ga (cos­tume de­sign­er); for­mer Miss T&T Danielle Jones; and Olympic cy­clist Njisane Phillip.

The ten fi­nal­ists will have three weeks of work with the ex­perts men­tioned above to pre­pare them, not on­ly for the pageant fi­nal, but al­so for life in gen­er­al be­yond that. Ackin said, "What we are seek­ing to do is pre­pare the young women to be am­bas­sadors of Trinidad and To­ba­go and al­though on­ly one will go on to ac­tu­al­ly rep­re­sent us at Miss Uni­verse, all of them will in the long run ben­e­fit from the ex­pe­ri­ence of the lo­cal pageant. There are many op­por­tu­ni­ties that will present them­selves to the young women af­ter the com­pe­ti­tion that what­ev­er they have learnt will serve them well. "This is why I want any young la­dy with a dream to rep­re­sent the na­tion or a de­sire to achieve grand things to come out for the cast­ing on Sun­day. Let noth­ing de­ter you from com­ing out, what­ev­er you may think about your chances be­lieve in your­self and step for­ward. Look at the world of op­por­tu­ni­ties that opened up for our Miss Uni­verse queens, Janelle Com­mis­siong and Wendy Fitzwilliam and even for those who did not win ei­ther the in­ter­na­tion­al or the lo­cal ti­tles who had win­dows and door­ways open be­fore them." There are at­trac­tive prizes be­ing of­fered for the Miss T&T Uni­verse Pageant and the cache of prizes is ex­pand­ing as more cor­po­rate spon­sors come on board en­cour­aged by Ackin's vi­sion for the com­pe­ti­tion. He said that in spite of the short time for prepa­ra­tion for the pageant's in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nal in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic come De­cem­ber, Miss T&T will be well pre­pared and prop­er­ly out­fit­ted for the fi­nal.

Miss Uni­verse T&TPro­duc­tion Team:

Leah-Mari Gue­vara

Mag­da­lene Wal­cott

Adri­an Ray­mond

Adam Chin Leong (Torakan), and Spin­ner World

Bal­ly

Ni­na Al­can­tara

Calvin French