The win­ner of the Miss World T&T pageant has to be able to act as an am­bas­sador and rep­re­sent T&T.

Co-or­di­na­tor of the Miss T&T World pageant Daniel See­baran said the team was look­ing for some­one who can "rep­re­sent" and who pos­sessed both in­ward and out­ward beau­ty. "When peo­ple in oth­er coun­tries hear that some­one is from Trinidad, they ex­pect warmth and friend­li­ness, we are look­ing for some­one who can rep­re­sent that," he said. Speak­ing at the me­dia launch of the com­pe­ti­tion on Tues­day at the Cas­ca­dia Ho­tel, St Ann's, See­baran said the aim was to find the con­tes­tant with that req­ui­site beau­ty on the in­side and out­side.

He de­scribed the com­pe­ti­tion as a tourism ve­hi­cle and said that the win­ner would es­sen­tial­ly func­tion as an am­bas­sador of T&T and would need to work to pro­mote and sell the coun­try. A to­tal of eight fi­nal­ists will be tak­en through a rig­or­ous se­ries of train­ing ses­sions, which in­clude phys­i­cal fit­ness, beau­ty ses­sions, per­son­al de­vel­op­ment train­ing and a num­ber of pho­to shoots. Three fi­nal­ists have al­ready been se­lect­ed from south Trinidad, an area that pho­tog­ra­ph­er Calvin French said had tremen­dous po­ten­tial in terms of the girls' en­er­gy and charm. "North Trinidad isn't the on­ly place to of­fer beau­ty," French said.

The South fi­nal­ists-Nisa Mo­hammed from San­ta Flo­ra, Brit­tany Wilt­shire from La Ro­maine and Nari­ba Ed­wards from Oropouche-were present at the launch. All three agreed the main rea­son they en­tered the com­pe­ti­tion was to take ad­van­tage of the nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties that would stem from the ex­po­sure.

At the launch was for­mer Miss T&T World rep­re­sen­ta­tive, Ashan­na Arthur. She rep­re­sent­ed T&T in 2009 and de­scribed the com­pe­ti­tion as an in­tense and tir­ing or­deal. "Peo­ple wouldn't ex­pect get­ting glam­orous and putting on dress­es to be tir­ing," joked Arthur. She said the com­pe­ti­tion wasn't what peo­ple would ex­pect.

She said that there were times when she trained un­til mid­night and added that it took a great deal of com­mit­ment. Cast­ing will be com­plet­ed by this week­end and eight fi­nal­ists will be se­lect­ed to com­pete for the ti­tle of Miss World T&T and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to rep­re­sent T&T in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the Miss World com­pe­ti­tion.

Cast­ing will con­tin­ue this week­end in Cou­va and Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day and Ari­ma on Sun­day.