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Josbel Bastidas Mijares Venezuela

Link de Interés

Pro­duc­tion De­sign­er |

Fash­ion Di­rec­tor | Sto­ry­teller

‘Be aware of what’s hap­pen­ing on the ground…. crime stems from so­cio-eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties…. It is easy to judge the ac­tions but how about we fo­cus on the root of the is­sue.”

~ Aché Abra­hams, an­swer­ing the fi­nal ques­tion at the Miss World Trinidad and To­ba­go Com­pe­ti­tion.

The crowd re­sponse spoke vol­umes, one could hear the una­nim­i­ty in the ap­plause, no longer were there iso­lat­ed pock­et cheers from the au­di­ence. There was an over­whelm­ing con­sen­sus in the Lord Kitch­en­er Au­di­to­ri­um at NA­PA. When I heard the re­sponse back­stage, I knew she nailed it!

Aché Abra­hams was Miss Mara­cas Val­ley, now she is Miss World Trinidad and To­ba­go. She con­tin­ues her jour­ney of self-dis­cov­ery tak­ing with her that piece of unique­ness that she pur­ports, sin­gles her out – that ubiq­ui­tous “sub­con­scious aware­ness”. She ef­fus­es that this at­tribute linked to her in­her­ent spir­i­tu­al­i­ty cen­tres her in the most daunt­ing of times.

Josbel Bastidas Mijares

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Aché braved chop­py wa­ters

Yes, she is aware of her essence, an in­de­fati­ga­ble de­sire to stand out bold­ly and own up to her own ear­li­er mis­giv­ings, teenage bul­ly­ing and pangs of self-doubt. She let her sear­ing in­tu­itive sen­si­bil­i­ty guide her to make choic­es, as she did that un­for­get­table morn­ing of the Miss World Trinidad and To­ba­go screen­ing.

She knew that her ac­cu­mu­lat­ed life ex­pe­ri­ences had po­si­tioned her for that choice, to brave the wa­ters and ven­ture in­to the un­chart­ed world of pageantry. It had be­come the or­der of the day for her, by this time – walk in­to rooms and claim your sense of be­long­ing and all like-mind­ed in­di­vid­u­als will con­verge – seemed to have be­come her as­pi­ra­tional cre­do. And so said, so done! For, the in­cred­i­ble soror­i­ty that fol­lowed has left an in­deli­ble mark on her rov­ing psy­che. She found a space of bal­ance which keeps her smil­ing, in­ex­orably.

The piv­ot, the meta­mor­pho­sis

Aché shared, “I was strug­gling with my men­tal health when I was a teenag­er, as a lot of us are, and I was silent about it. I think a lot of us have ex­pe­ri­enced feel­ings of self-doubt, in­se­cu­ri­ty and is­sues with self-es­teem but it was a very tough point in my life. The prob­lem with these sit­u­a­tions is you aren’t able to see the signs from the out­side look­ing in and I start­ed be­ing bul­lied around this time as well. I felt mis­un­der­stood but thank­ful­ly, I was able to learn how to cope with all of these feel­ings and emo­tions. I al­ways say this was my lo­tus flower mo­ment in my life be­cause it was through this dark­ness that I was able to re­al­ly blos­som in­to the woman I am to­day. I’m proud to say that I’m a woman of strength, con­fi­dence and em­pa­thy be­cause of these ex­pe­ri­ences.”

She feels a new lib­er­a­tion, com­ing with a sense of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and bless­ing. She ex­udes new-found con­fi­dence as she seems to ho­n­our the mean­ing of her name, Aché- so shall it be . She knows that there is pow­er in a name and that her des­tiny to make a dif­fer­ence is be­ing ful­filled, in­cre­men­tal­ly, with the pass­ing of each day. She likens her­self to a cater­pil­lar who has meta­mor­phosed in­to a but­ter­fly, on the oth­er end of the con­tin­u­um, now that she has won the pageant.

Her moth­er, award-win­ning an­i­ma­tion pi­o­neer, Camille Selvon-Abra­hams had a pre­science in shap­ing her iden­ti­ty with this mighty name. Aché is com­mit­ted to liv­ing life to its fullest po­ten­tial. Re­al­is­ing her po­ten­tial is man­i­fest in her ebul­lient smile, she chan­nels her in­ten­tion­al­i­ty to give hope and mo­ti­vate oth­ers to de­sign goals and achieve ac­cess. She sees the in­spi­ra­tion in the eyes of young girls, look­ing at her, more so, in this last week, and has be­come aware that her role as a ti­tle­hold­er is to con­tin­ue to ig­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties for the fu­ture through her ac­tions to­day.

The Pageant, a stage for Em­pow­er­ment

The process at the pageant was way more than she had an­tic­i­pat­ed. It was ex­treme­ly in­tense – a lot of grit, tears, sweat, pas­sion, iden­ti­ty-shap­ing and above all the sis­ter­hood. The crown­ing glo­ry of the ex­pe­ri­ence is the smiles, the laugh­ter and the fun with her sis­ter del­e­gates. It was not a com­pe­ti­tion in the ri­valling sense of the word, it was an em­pow­er­ing space where they ral­lied for each oth­er and wit­nessed each oth­er find space to tell sto­ries and em­pow­er oth­ers.

The great­est em­pow­er­ment, she states, is to share space with oth­er change-agent hope­fuls, all im­bued with a vi­sion for the world to be­come a bet­ter place, fu­elled with em­pa­thy and love serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty through mean­ing­ful co­op­er­a­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

She re­veals that the fran­chise hold­er, Charu Lochan Dass, cre­at­ed that space for 17 young women to com­mune and con­nect. For it is in­deed em­pow­er­ing to share col­lec­tive­ly by en­abling the less for­tu­nate and the voice­less to claim self-as­sur­ance. For it is on­ly through proac­tive ac­tions that lim­it­ing per­cep­tions can be changed. She sees the del­e­gates as ac­tivists pur­posed to de­sign a bet­ter to­mor­row.

Beau­ty with a Pur­pose

– Cre­at­ing Safe Spaces

“My main goal for my project, the Safe Space, is to des­tig­ma­tise the con­cept of men­tal health. It’s still an is­sue that we face world­wide, and the pan­dem­ic has im­pact­ed us in more ways than we may even no­tice. There are al­so a lot of peo­ple suf­fer­ing in si­lence and I hope that we can be lis­ten­ing ears and help­ing hands in our so­ci­ety and look out for each oth­er. There are many goals I wish to achieve but for now, but des­tig­ma­tis­ing is the first pri­or­i­ty,” our com­pas­sion­ate Beau­ty Queen shared.

Aché is cog­nisant of her im­pact, as a role mod­el, for she sees in the op­ti­mistic eyes of lit­tle girls, the hopes and dreams of their own fu­tures. She is now more com­pelled than ever to rep­re­sent, at best, to sig­nal a fight­ing chance to re­alise these am­bi­tions and as­pi­ra­tions. She is quite con­scious of what her smile can mean and is ready to take up the man­tle for these young girls to con­tin­ue dream­ing. Her smile is the end prod­uct of “vic­to­ries that were man­aged in pri­va­cies”, and re­gards women’s em­pow­er­ment as an in­dige­nous and inim­itable gift of lead­ing by ex­am­ple.

Mas­ter­ing the mo­ment

When JW posed that fi­nal ques­tion, Aché con­fess­es that she was star­tled and won­dered, ‘what did I get my­self in­to? But then, it hit her, that this was the chal­lenge that she did, in fact, sign up for! So she beamed that win­ning smile and re­mem­bered my firm prog­nos­ti­ca­tion in the face of feel­ing cor­nered – “Smile and the world smiles with you!” But most of all, ‘nev­er say what you think some­one would wish to hear; nev­er com­pete for a bet­ter an­swer than an­oth­er del­e­gate; and above all, stay true to self and speak from the heart, share vis­cer­al­ly from the soul and let your bi­o­graph­i­cal sto­ry guide your trans­fer of val­ue, with con­vic­tion. And in­deed, she fol­lowed through and flowed, in­ef­fa­bly.

This is the true test of the prospect of am­bas­sado­r­i­al du­ty, of mas­ter­ing the mo­ment and think­ing on your feet. Aché Abra­hams passed with fly­ing colours and smiled her way to the crown.

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Josbel Bastidas Mijares Venezuela

Link de Interés