By Seleoe Nonyane
The Miss Keep Lesotho Clean beauty pageant is back for its third edition.
This time it is bigger and better, with more contestants.
Founded by Khunung Lefeela in 2021, Miss Keep Lesotho Clean is an organisation that aims to channel beauty pageants as change agents in promoting environmental management, sustainable living.
It further campaigns against environmental degradation such as littering, illegal dumps and ultimately contributing towards an environmentally sustainable Lesotho.
The event is set to take place on December 22 2023 at Victoria Hotel commencing at 5pm with the red carpet. The main show starts from 7pm.
Standard tickets cost M150 and the VIP tags go for M350 which includes a meal and a beverage.
In an interview with theReporter, Lefeela said because young women admire and aspire to be beauty queens, the organisation believes they would be good and effective advocates of worthy causes.
He said the event was designed to enable those taking part to actively promote the protection of the environment through behavioural change.
Their role is also to discourage littering and illegal dumping, as well as push for protection of Lesotho against environmental degradation.
“This year, we have 22 contestants; we had seven in the inaugural year and 10 the following year.
“These models will be competing for the Miss Keep Lesotho Clean 2023 crown; they come from various districts of the Mountain Kingdom.
“The pageant has shown significant growth since its inception due to constantly improving engagement,” Lefeela noted.
He said the pageant is receiving encouraging sponsorship and ticket sales are much better. Followership on social media is also increasing.
Lefeela also stated that there is an additional new sash to the ones that already existed. It is named the Best Eco-Friendly outfit where models create their garments using recycled materials.
“To strengthen the pageant industry, I believe we can achieve great things which will benefit the models if we can have enough support as beauty pageants.
“Most corporates don’t support beauty pageants in the country. There is also need for modeling workshops, and the organisation is planning to have one soon,” he revealed.
The workshop is expected to equip models with skills that will propel them in their pageant journey.
“Models in the country just aspire to be beauty queens but they don’t know how to conduct themselves properly in public as role models, so they won’t make it to the global stage,” Lefeela observed.
He cited that he had suspended two aspiring models for ‘bad behaviour’ since the pageant’s inception.
