Miss Earth hopefuls head to Philippines for final

The Philippines will be the lucky host of this year’s Miss Earth Finals and four British beauties will be battling it out against 90 other green hopefuls from around the world to claim the coveted Miss Earth title. Mandy Barder writes.

The event, due to be held at the Boracay Ecovillage Resort and Convention Centre in the Philippines on the 22nd November, awards four titles to the overall winning country, which are matched with the four elements of earth, wind, fire and water.

Representing the UK at this year’s event is English Kirsty Nichol, a 19 year old student at Queen Mary University of London, Sarah Finlay, 23, from Scotland who graduated from the University of Glasgow with an MA in Geography, Dominique Dyer, 20, from Wales and Kayleighy O’Reilly, 18, from Northern Ireland.

Prior to the finals this summer the girls took part in a number of green voluntary tasks, which included street and beach litter clearance, tree planting, environmental awareness campaigns and promoting the idea of recycling and reusing.

Launched by Carousel Productions Inc ten years ago, the Miss Earth Contest was contrived to encourage people to get involved with initiatives to help protect the planet and to lead greener lives. They felt that a beauty queen was someone that people admired and would make a good advocate of a green cause.

Network stations ABS and CBN will be covering the event in the Philippines this month.

Next year’s Miss Earth contestants can enter online at Miss Earth and the pageant will be held in England next July. Area licenses for companies or individuals to run their own area heats are now available.