Brunette Makanyiso Delivers Powerful Beauty With a Purpose Message in Miss World Head to Head Challenge
Brunette Makanyiso has delivered a powerful first-round performance in the Miss World Head to Head challenge, using her personal experience with poverty and hunger to explain why her Beauty With A Purpose project matters so deeply to her. The Zimbabwean beauty queen spoke openly about growing up during difficult financial circumstances and experiencing periods when her family did not know where their next meal would come from. Her story connected her personal journey to a much wider global issue affecting millions of people, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Rather than presenting poverty only as a statistic, Makanyiso focused on the human experiences behind hunger, school exclusion and limited opportunities. Her presentation showed how personal hardship can become the motivation for creating practical solutions that help other people build better lives.
Makanyiso explained that her childhood was shaped by seasons of hardship, including times when her family depended on Red Cross food packages. She recalled sharing meals with her grandmother, other grandchildren and her young mother while growing up in circumstances where food security could not be taken for granted. Her experience with malnutrition gave her a personal understanding of what hunger means and how deeply poverty can affect a child’s development. Despite those challenges, she refused to accept poverty as the final definition of her life. Today, as a pharmacist and beauty queen, she uses her own journey as evidence that difficult circumstances can be overcome when people receive support, education and opportunities.
One of the strongest aspects of Makanyiso’s Head to Head presentation was the way she moved from her personal story to the wider reality facing people around the world. She pointed out that poverty is often reduced to numbers and statistics, but behind every figure is a person dealing with real challenges. She spoke about mothers who sacrifice their own meals so their children can eat and children who may remain at home because their families cannot afford school fees. These examples showed why poverty cannot be addressed only through temporary relief. For Makanyiso, tackling poverty requires solutions that help people gain the skills, education and opportunities they need to become more self-sufficient.
A significant turning point in Makanyiso’s understanding of poverty came through a conversation with her sister. She recalled a moment when her sister prepared a beautiful meal, placed it in front of her and then asked her to think about how many people would go to bed hungry that night. The simple question changed the way she viewed the food in front of her and sparked a deeper conversation about hunger and inequality. Makanyiso and her sister began thinking about how social media could be used to mobilise people around a campaign focused on ensuring that no one goes to bed hungry. That conversation eventually became part of the inspiration behind her broader approach to community development.
The idea of using the campaign hashtag “No One Goes to Bed Hungry Tonight” reflected the immediate need to support people facing hunger. Makanyiso and her sister envisioned attracting sponsors and using that support to provide meals in underprivileged communities. However, the excitement surrounding the idea quickly led to another important question. What would happen after the team left one community and moved to another, leaving the original beneficiaries facing the same challenges? That question pushed Makanyiso to think beyond food donations and towards solutions that could help people create sustainable livelihoods.
This realisation became the foundation of her Beauty With A Purpose project. Makanyiso explained that she did not want to simply give people something that would temporarily relieve the effects of poverty. Instead, she wanted to give them tools and opportunities that could help them rise above poverty. Her approach centres on practical skills, education and access to opportunities that can change the direction of a person’s life. This philosophy has shaped the work of her foundation and given her pageant platform a purpose that extends beyond traditional beauty competitions. Her message is that people should not only receive assistance but should also have opportunities to develop the ability to support themselves and their families.
Makanyiso’s approach began with a simple question about what she could personally do despite having limited resources. She realised that she did not need to have significant financial backing to begin creating opportunities for people in her community. Instead, she could identify individuals who already possessed valuable skills and encourage them to share those skills with others. One of the first examples involved a woman from her church who worked as a chef and agreed to train 20 girls in culinary skills. That experience showed Makanyiso that communities already contain people with knowledge that can be passed on to others at little or no cost.
The project expanded from culinary training into other practical skills, including carpentry, baking and sewing. Makanyiso described an approach in which people with skills could help train young people who might otherwise spend their days without access to productive opportunities. The model is based on connecting skilled individuals with young people who want to learn and develop practical abilities. Such training can provide more than technical knowledge because it can also give participants confidence and a foundation for future employment or entrepreneurship. For Makanyiso, these opportunities represent a more sustainable response to poverty than short-term assistance alone.
Education forms another important part of her Beauty With A Purpose vision. Makanyiso explained that even an amount such as US$1,000 can make a meaningful difference when it is used to help children remain in school. Education can provide children with opportunities that might otherwise be lost when families struggle to meet school-related costs. Keeping a child in school can also help prevent poverty from being passed from one generation to the next. By supporting education alongside skills development, Makanyiso’s project seeks to address both immediate needs and longer-term barriers to economic opportunity.
Her personal journey as a pharmacist also strengthens the message behind her project. Makanyiso has moved from experiencing childhood hardship to building a professional career, demonstrating how education and opportunity can change a person’s circumstances. Her story does not suggest that everyone can overcome poverty through individual effort alone. Instead, it highlights the importance of giving people access to the resources, skills and support needed to create better outcomes. By placing her own experience at the centre of her Beauty With A Purpose presentation, she showed the Miss World audience why the issue is personal rather than abstract.
Makanyiso also acknowledged the enormous scale of poverty and the difficulty of confronting a problem that can appear too large for one individual to address. She described poverty as a giant standing in front of society while her own voice may seem small in comparison. However, she argued that history repeatedly shows how major movements and important changes can begin when one person decides to take action. Her decision to become that person reflects the central message of her project. She is using her platform to demonstrate that meaningful change can begin with a simple idea, a willing community and people prepared to share what they know.
Her reference to Nelson Mandela added a strong closing message to her presentation. Makanyiso cited Mandela’s well-known view that overcoming poverty is not simply an act of charity but an issue of justice and human dignity. The quote reinforced her argument that people living in poverty deserve more than temporary assistance. They deserve opportunities that allow them to live with dignity, access education and develop skills that can improve their circumstances. By ending her presentation with that message, Makanyiso connected her personal story to a broader call for action on poverty and inequality.
Her first-round performance in the Miss World Head to Head challenge has therefore given Makanyiso an important platform to explain the purpose behind her Beauty With A Purpose project. Her story combines personal experience, professional achievement and community action to present a practical vision for addressing poverty. Rather than focusing only on food donations, she wants to create opportunities through skills training, education and access to people who can share valuable knowledge. Her journey from experiencing food insecurity as a child to becoming a pharmacist and beauty queen gives her message a deeply personal foundation. As her Miss World journey continues, Brunette Makanyiso has shown that her Beauty With A Purpose project is not simply about winning a crown, but about using her voice and platform to create opportunities for people who need a chance to change their lives.
