Days af­ter she was sub­ject­ed to fierce crit­i­cisms for her com­ments on pover­ty in T&T, Jea­nine Brandt, this coun­try’s del­e­gate at the Miss World 2021 pageant, has been named among 40 se­mi-fi­nal­ists who will go to Puer­to Ri­co from March 13 to 18, to com­pete in the next round of the com­pe­ti­tion.

The 40 se­mi-fi­nal­ists, in­clud­ing 15 who were al­ready elect­ed as fast track win­ners and 25 se­lect­ed by the judges, were an­nounced on the Miss World Web­site yes­ter­day.

There was mas­sive out­cry from cit­i­zens on so­cial me­dia af­ter a video of Brandt mak­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion for her Beau­ty with a Pur­pose project for the pageant was made pub­lic on Mon­day.

In it she said: “In my coun­try thou­sands of chil­dren live in pover­ty. Lit­tle girls sleep on the cold ground in makeshift homes. They have no ac­cess to run­ning wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty. They can­not at­tend school. They have no ac­cess to health­care, and they don’t even know where their next meal is com­ing from. No child de­serves to grow up liv­ing un­der these con­di­tions.

“I formed the Brandt Beau­ty Foun­da­tion to break the cy­cle of pover­ty among these fam­i­lies and these lit­tle girls and to give them op­por­tu­ni­ties to rewrite their dreams.”

Many took to so­cial me­dia to ex­press their dis­sat­is­fac­tion and ac­cused Brandt of gross­ly ex­ag­ger­at­ing T&T’s sit­u­a­tion by say­ing there were thou­sands of lit­tle girls who sleep on the floor in their homes.

Brandt lat­er is­sued a state­ment in which she said she was asked to present her project in un­der two min­utes dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion and meant no harm through her con­tri­bu­tion. She sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised for the com­ment.

The fi­nale of 70th edi­tion of Miss World 2021, which was orig­i­nal­ly set to take place last No­vem­ber, was post­poned due to health and safe­ty con­cerns and has been resched­uled at Puer­to Ri­co Col­i­se­um Jose Miguel Agrelot.