Trinidad and To­ba­go’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Miss World pageant Tya Jane Ramey launched her Beau­ty with a Pur­pose project at the St Bene­dict’s Ro­man Catholic Church in La Ro­maine yes­ter­day.

The beau­ty queen’s in­ter­est to as­sist Venezue­lan mi­grants who en­tered our shores peeked dur­ing the six-week prepa­ra­tion to del­e­gate a queen pri­or to her win­ning the ti­tle last month.

Ram­sey un­veiled the ban­ner, Project Es­pranan­za—build­ing bridges, not walls— and vouched to main­tain al­liances with the La Ro­maine Mi­grant Sup­port Group (LARMS) to bet­ter lives.

The LARMS is a vol­un­tary group for young Venezue­lans who en­tered T&T with their par­ents that fled their home­land and were vic­tims of a col­lapsed po­lit­i­cal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic sys­tem.

Ramey said her project was right on stream with the ideals of the group that were aligned with her in­tent to bridge the gap and bring about in­clu­sion to T&T na­tion­als.

“My beau­ty with a pur­pose project is syn­ony­mous to the goals and ac­tiv­i­ties of the or­gan­i­sa­tion, that is, chil­dren main­tain their in­alien­able right to an ed­u­ca­tion in the nur­tur­ing en­vi­ron­ment, where a sense of nor­mal­i­ty and love can con­quer the trau­ma of dis­place­ment.

“My project of­fers a Trin­bag­on­ian flavour where through the use of uni­ver­sal lan­guages, such as mu­sic, the­atre, dance and art, can break down walls and build bridges of hope for our next gen­er­a­tion,” Ramey said.

Un­veil­ing the ban­ner, which shows two hands ex­tend­ed in a hand­shake, (Venezuela to T&T) Ramey said the project was two-fold; to bring aware­ness and sen­si­ti­sa­tion and the oth­er with the strength­en­ing and ex­pan­sion of this mod­el.

Ramey said: “We can­not con­tin­ue to build walls of hate to peo­ple who have been emo­tion­al­ly and so­cial­ly bruised in tak­ing a risk to leave their homes, and jour­ney for days in search for hope…hu­man be­hav­iour, in or­der to in­flu­ence peo­ple’s be­hav­iours, they must first change how they think and feel about the mat­ter. I will car­ry out ed­u­ca­tion­al sem­i­nars to schools, com­mu­ni­ty-based, and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions.”

Co-di­rec­tor of LARMS Ang­ie Ram­nar­ine ac­knowl­edged the ben­e­fits of Ramey’s project but ad­mit­ted she was s bit scep­ti­cal at first.

Ram­nar­ine said when Bri­an Gopaul—part fran­chise hold­er to Miss World—ap­proached her with the idea, she thought the nov­el­ty of the idea seemed cos­met­ic.

Ram­nar­ine said: “When Bri­an asked me to on be­half of Tya Jane I thought, was this just of cos­met­ic val­ue or a long-term part­ner­ship? But to­day it is a red-let­ter day for Tya Jane to choose this as her spe­cial project to present to the rest of the world.”

Ramey will com­pete in the Miss World pageant in Thai­land on De­cem­ber 7.