This beautiful morena of a Miss Universe Philippines 2020 candidate has already had the experience of representing the country in an international competition in China. Still, nothing beats vying for a major national crown that will bring her pageant career to greater heights. And Bea Theresa Maynigo of Baguio City is keeping her eyes on the prize.

Bea’s advocacy is to promote equality – to give equal opportunities to people despite the differences. She believes that everyone should be given a chance to prove themselves and live the life they want. Nobody should ever feel inferior or left behind just because they happen to be off the grid of society’s mainstream or less fortunate for that matter.

When the travel ban and the community quarantine was announced, Bea was actually staying in Pampanga because of work. She did not travel back to Manila anymore to get her stuff or take the bus to Pangasinan to stay with her family because she didn’t want to take the risk of being exposed to the virus. She was of the thinking that things will normalize after two weeks, only to realize that extensions were inevitable. And so, she used the time to focus, take care of her mental health and prepare for the pageant. She would do home workouts and review her notes. Days turned into weeks and months. Watching the news and reading articles online about what was happening around the country us frightened her. She needed to do something about it nonetheless.

But being stuck in Pampanga where she did not know a lot of people or organizations that could help her conduct community services aside from being house-restricted, she decided to support donation drives instead. She was neither born rich nor living an easy life to have all the resources to help the people in need. But with her influence as a beauty queen, she knew that she can still do something in her own little way. She was able to encourage other individuals to donate as well and was able to raise an amount that was enough to provide PPEs to more than 10 hospitals in Pangasinan as well as also food for frontliners in the checkpoints. Being a candidate of Miss Universe Philippines helped a lot in this project. That’s when she truly realized that beauty pageants are platforms that empower women to become voices and inspirations to the community.

Bea also enrolled in the free online classes of Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is almost done with her first course. She took one that will help in her personality development. This is something that she would like to encourage other people to do as well. Quality education is just one click away these days.

“Now I am in Pangasinan with my family and I’ve been helping in cleaning our idle land in the farm (where we used to live 15 years ago) because we’re planning to convert it into a plantation so that food would always be available most specially in times of need like what we are experiencing today. There’s a program in our town that my family took part in – Project Plant which encourages the townspeople to plant in their backyards that will for sure benefit themselves, their families and the community as a whole.

I also took the time to relive my childhood where I would play in the fields, ride my bike and fly a kite to remind me who I was, what I enjoyed as a kid and where I came from. It’s part of my journey to discover my authenticity. Being able to play outside, being “free” is one of my best childhood memories.

It’s a really sad period of our lives to experience a pandemic that caused loss of jobs, hunger, deaths, pain and suffering, but if we could look for the beauty in it, it is giving us the time to focus on what’s more important in life. Don’t forget to Learn, Live and Love”