Joel Julien

joel.julien@guardian.co.tt

Stand­ing as one of the fi­nal five con­tes­tants in the Miss World T&T com­pe­ti­tion on Sun­day night, Miss Mara­cas Val­ley Ache Abra­hams was giv­en 30 sec­onds to pro­vide a so­lu­tion to one of the peren­ni­al prob­lems plagu­ing this coun­try.

“If you were the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T, how would you ad­dress the ris­ing crime rate?” host Ja­son Williams asked.

The crowd in­side the Lord Kitch­en­er Au­di­to­ri­um at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts in Port-of-Spain groaned when they heard the ques­tion.

But Abra­hams ap­peared to be un­af­fect­ed by the ques­tion and sim­ply turned to the crowd and flashed a quick smile be­fore she re­spond­ed to Williams.

“Well, un­for­tu­nate­ly, this has been an is­sue that we still need to fix but I think be­ing in any po­si­tion of pow­er, we need to be aware what is hap­pen­ing on the ground.

“And a lot of the time, crime stems from so­cio-eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties and that is what we need to be mind­ful of be­cause it is easy to judge the ac­tions but how about we fo­cus on the root of the is­sue,” she said.

The crowd cheered when they heard her an­swer.

Up to that point, Abra­hams had been among the favourites ex­pect­ed to walk away with the crown af­ter cap­tur­ing some of the night’s oth­er prizes, in­clud­ing the Fit­ness Award and the Dig­i­tal Me­dia Am­bas­sador Award.

But af­ter her an­swer on crime, the crowd felt cer­tain who their new queen would be.

They got that con­fir­ma­tion mo­ments lat­er when host Jyn­nyn Ed­wards an­nounced that Abra­hams was the win­ner.

Miss Cunu­pia Da­nia Duntin and Miss Ari­ma Jemi­ma Pierre were re­spec­tive­ly an­nounced as the first and sec­ond run­ners-up, while Miss Clax­ton Bay Janelle Pir­mal and Miss San Juan Sa­van­nah Sandy round­ed out the top five.

Abra­hams suc­ceeds last year’s win­ner Jea­nine Brandt and will rep­re­sent T&T at the 71st Miss World pageant next year.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Abra­hams fur­ther ex­plained her thought process in tack­ling crime and lead­ing with em­pa­thy.

“I meant what I said be­cause it is so easy to look at the things that are hap­pen­ing and how peo­ple act in terms of crime, but we don’t look at the sit­u­a­tion in terms of what is hap­pen­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty and why does it lead to that point,” she said.

“So, I think that it is im­por­tant that we re­al­ly fo­cus on it be­cause in­stead of shift­ing blame, we should fo­cus on how can we erad­i­cate the is­sue and a lot of the times that is some­thing much more.

“We need to lead with em­pa­thy and un­der­stand­ing be­fore any­thing else. When you have em­pa­thy and un­der­stand­ing, it gives you the space to now say ‘okay this is the sit­u­a­tion and clear­ly this is not work­ing, so how do we find a res­o­lu­tion for it, how do we solve the is­sue’ be­cause I re­alise it is easy for us to say them against us and us against them.”

Abra­hams ac­knowl­edged that her coro­na­tion on Sun­day night was the start of hard work to come.

But she said she was look­ing for­ward to it, as “pres­sure cre­ates di­a­monds.”

Abra­hams, 23, is a cre­ative artist and men­tal health ad­vo­cate.

Her Beau­ty with a Pur­pose project, “Safe Space,” fo­cused on the is­sue of des­tig­ma­tis­ing men­tal health.

“There is no health with­out men­tal health,” she said.

Abra­hams grad­u­at­ed from St Joseph’s Con­vent in St Joseph be­fore at­tend­ing the Iden­ti­ty School of Act­ing in Lon­don.

Abra­hams said her goal is to even­tu­al­ly be­come an ac­tress.