SINCE Binibining Pilipinas has announced last May 25 that it “supports the government’s quarantine restrictions and efforts to curb the further spread of COVID-19, which has now become a global pandemic,” their plans to reschedule the activities of the 57th edition of the annual tilt “shall depend on guidelines and regulations that will be issued by the government in the coming months.”
Forty delegates from around the country have already been selected earlier this year for the competition, which was originally scheduled to culminate at the Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City last May 31. It has been postponed indefinitely after one of its longest-running franchises, Miss International, has announced that it has cancelled its 60th edition, originally scheduled for October 29, 2020. It will be held instead next year in Tokyo, but after the Tokyo Summer Olympics which was also cancelled and moved to a yet undisclosed date.
Binibining Pilipinas is also awaiting its other international pageant partners for their official announcements.
Meanwhile, while patiently waiting for the pageant to resume, Vickie Marie Rushton from Negros Occidental recommends to Filipinos to take online courses like the TESDA Online Program to continue learning and productivity despite the COVID-19 crisis.
Vickie has, in fact, completed three courses during the enhanced community quarantine and is beginning to realize the benefits of online learning to cope with the orders to stay home due to the extension of the quarantine.
“I finished my third online course. It feels so good to do something productive while on quarantine,” she wrote on her social media accounts.
Vickie has enrolled last April in the TESDA Online Program (TOP) that offers 68 online courses for free and they are all self-paced.
She took courses in Agriculture, Entrepreneurship and 21st Century Skills. “These courses are very useful and timely. I love gardening, so it broadened my knowledge and skills about growing plants and the importance of having a “survival garden” in our backyards.
Vickie, after obtaining her certificates, shared notes on what she learned, including managing personal finances, and encouraged others to do the same because “it’s quick and easy.”
She prodded everyone to go to e-tesda.gov.ph.
Now going for her third consecutive and final bid to win in Binibining Pilipinas, Vickie and the 39 other official candidates are keeping themselves updated online, monitoring developments in the pageant world both here and abroad after stringent protocols on social distancing has forbidden mass gatherings of any kind, fashion and pageant events being among the hardest hit.
Vickie, now 28, placed first runner-up in 2018 and was in the top 15 last year. She hopes to finally snag one of the cherished titles in this current edition of the premier beauty pageant.
