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Rumbidzai Mbewe, Sunday Life Correspondent
THE Miss Tourism pageant has joined hands with Zvishavane’s first commercial radio station, YaFm in hosting the national auditions at the mining town. The auditions will be held at Shabani Mine Club on 30 September.
In an interview, the Miss Tourism spokesperson, Alson Darikayi, confirmed the developments.
“We have been engaging with YaFm for some time and I am glad to say things are looking good. We are just concluding on a few things otherwise we are good to go with our partnership,” he said.
He said the partnership was a deliberate strategy to reach out to the people, especially those who are in the Midlands. The partnership will also market and promote the profile of the pageant. “We intend to hype the rebranded Miss Tourism Zimbabwe 2016 as the biggest, most trusted, transparent, well organised, scandal free pageant whose major focus and thrust is to advocate for the empowerment of the girl child,” he said.
The sales and events executive for YaFm who is also the organiser of the Miss Tourism Midlands province, Rejoice Chishamba said they were calling for interested girls between the age of 18 to 24 to apply. She said the candidates should at least have Advanced Level, diploma or degrees and the auditions are targeting contestants from Gweru, Shurugwi, Zvishavane, Mberengwa, Chivi and other areas in the Midlands.
“I am sure you are aware that apart from the beautiful girls along the Great Dyke, we are privileged to have the Midlands State University in Zvishavane and Gweru campus. We also have the Great Zimbabwe University in Mashava and many other tertiary institutions which gives us an advantage to getting as many contestants,” she said.
She said in support of the Miss Tourism pageant, the radio station has a weekly programme called Fufu’s Diary, a programme which focuses on the girl child and the problems they face. “We also feel it’s an opportune time to deal with certain perceptions regarding beauty pageants. We also want to appeal to parents to support their children if they think they can take up the modeling as a career,’ she said.
Besides YaFm, Miss Tourism Zimbabwe has also entered into these strategic partnerships with several other radio stations and newspapers in the country. They will also launch a reality television show in partnership with ZTV next week.
Dates for other provincial auditions have been released. Bulawayo will have its auditions at Rainbow Hotel on 28 September.
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