Crown Miss Intercontinental Sri Lanka 2017 – Giving women a voice

• Pageant to support Heavena Residential Shelter for women
• Women’s Chamber to mentor participants on entrepreneurship and business skills

Affirming its axiom of ‘Going Beyond Beauty’, CROWN Miss Intercontinental Sri Lanka 2017 organised by Exceptional Entertainment is collaborating with the Women’s Chamber of Industry and Commerce (WCIC) as Official Mentor and supporting Community Concern’s Heavena Residential Shelter for abused, homeless and trafficked women, highlighting the issues faced by women around the country.  

Global Franchise Holder and National Director Sri Lanka Joyce James-Gunawardene’s primary focus in tying in the pageant with ‘Going beyond beauty’ is to ensure that gender issues, challenges and opportunities are placed in the spotlight, while the participants are equipped with skills and competencies to become fully fledged businesswomen and professionals by being mentored by the WCIC.  

“Women the world over face innumerable challenges, whether it’s in the workplace or in society.  I want our twenty participants and eventually our national title holder and runners up to be the voice for these women and also be equipped in their own right to go out into the world and fuel their careers. It is for this reason that we decided to invite the WCIC on board as Official Mentor and through our ticket sales, support the Heavena Residential Shelter, a non-governmental organisation that has an unblemished track record of working in Sri Lanka for 36 years supporting marginalised women and children.”  

Collaborating with the WCIC is a unique initiative for any pageant in Sri Lanka and will undeniably open innumerable opportunities for the participants.  As Chairperson of the WCIC Rifa Mustapha explains: “Mentoring is something we have been looking at undertaking given our large pool of resourceful women entrepreneurs who can certainly add value to the young women who are stepping onto a new threshold through this pageant.”  

Opining that the calibre of beauty queens Sri Lanka produces must improve, Rifa states that she looks forward to collaborating with Exceptional Entertainment in this empowering process. The Chamber will be conducting mentoring workshops for the twenty finalists and guiding them on a needs basis, while the title holder and runners up will be mentored for one year thereafter, on a more focused and intense programme.  

Elaborating on Heavena, Roshan Wijemanne who spearheads Community Concern says: “By providing support to marginalised women and children, Heavena provides a healing environment where mums and their children who have been abused, homeless and trafficked find refuge. We work on a sustainable platform where the women and children are made stronger mentally and physically.”  This is done through a series of programmes in anger management, domestic violence, problem solving with access to counselling, psychosocial help, emotional support, legal advice and education for the children.  In addition, entrepreneurship and employable skills are extended to these women in order to moot micro-enterprise, giving them an opportunity for self employment or to be gainfully employed, helping reintegration into society.  

For Joyce, this is the ideal platform for the pageant to be associated with. “Going Beyond Beauty sheds light on issues that impact women and we want our communities, through our participants to be aware of these issues and be a voice and advocate for gender issues.” It is planned for the participants to visit the shelter in order to spotlight issues faced by women in various social strata.  

While the WCIC is the Official Mentor, the Title sponsor for the pageant is JAT Holdings, Tiesh the Crown and Jewellery Sponsor, Hilton Colombo is the Hotel Partner, Kinetic Fitness as Fitness Partner and Prishan Pandithage as Official Photographer. Daily Mirror Life, Daily FT, Life Online and Sunday Times are the official Print Media Partners, LIVING magazine is Glossy Partner and TV 1, Yes FM and Legends as Electronic Media Partner.