By: Joseph Cunningham
Miss Jamaica World, Yendi Phillips, will represent the island at the Miss World Pageant in Shanghai, China on December 1. She was crowned at last Saturday's staging before a capacity crowd that seemed to be all hers and without a question; she totally dominated the contests. Phillips was the Most Aware, got the highest votes from the public and won three of the four mini-competitions. The mini-competitions were comprised of, the talent competition, the Supreme Ventures Miss Jamaica World (MJW) Sport and the Ting MJW Beach Beauty titles.
Speaking to reporters after her landslide victory, she said, "I'm not a negative thinker. I'm all about positivity. I believe you focus on what you want and only that and not allow anything else to get to you to break your train of thought. So my focus wasn't, maybe I can't win, my focus was that I want this."
It was obvious that Yendi was an overwhelming favorite. Whenever she appeared on stage she was greeted by rapturous applause, accompanied by great words of encouragement when facing the judges to answer questions.
The Judges questioned her ambitions concerning nation building, and Yendi responded emphatically, stating, "I would love to focus on the arts and implementing arts programmes in Jamaica. However, in light of Hurricane Dean, I would have to, definitely, love to work with government and influential figures and really try to get something going, get the ground moving on relief systems for the hurricane."
