Akira Manawer Teen Beauty Queen’s Inspiring PET Project is helping to keep young girls in school. South African teenager Akira Manawer selected as a national finalist for the 18th annual Miss and Mr Junior South Africa pageant.

The finals will take place in Pretoria between April 4 and 8 next year. She and her fellow finalists have been asked to help raise funds for this year’s two chosen charities as their PET projects. This way the finalists are encouraged to be aware of the need to assist others through charitable work.

Akira Manawer Teen Beauty Queen’s Inspiring PET Project

The Miss and Mr Junior South Africa 2017 pageant charities are the Mimi Foundation and an innovative organisation called Deskbags. The Mimi Foundation provides young girls with sanitary pads, a simple but incredibly effective way to improve their lives by boosting their self-confidence and sense of self-worth.

It was founded by Ramona Kasavan in 2013 as a non-profit organisation to provide affordable sanitary pads to the more than 2-million South African schoolgirls who are unable to access them.

While girls from more affluent communities take sanitary pads for granted, many South African girls can’t afford them and are forced to skip school for several days each month. By supplying girls with sanitary pads, Mimi is helping to give them back their dignity and to keep them in school.

“As a finalist I am proud to be able to help restore dignity to many South African girls who do not have access to or the money to buy sanitary pads,” said Akira.

A young, unmarried mother from this area to whom Akira spoke said she was trying to give her and her baby a better life by completing her education. She had this to say about the foundation:

“Mimi changed my life by supplying me with sanitary pads for the past year. This has enabled me to concentrate on studying. Improving my personal hygiene has made me far more confident, too,” she said.

“By donating just R180 per year to the foundation you can make the life of one young girl simpler and more innocent. You can give her dignity. You really can change her life for the better,” she said.

The finalists will also help to raise money to distribute Deskbags to communities where pupils do not have school desks or places at home where they can do homework.

This innovative study aid doubles as a bag for books and a small temporary desk top or writing surface that can be used by children to do their work while sitting on the floor.

To find out more about Akira Manawer Teen Beauty Queen’s Inspiring PET Project you can reach out to her mother, Vasie, at 084 2472483.

Source:  southcoastherald.co.za