FORMER President James R. Mancham recently spent ten days in Seoul, Korea, attending the 2007 Interreligious Peace Sports Festival which is held every year with the objective of building peace by promoting character, religious cooperation  and excellence in sports with the finishing line being inter-religious peace. For more information see website – www.sportsforpeace.org [1].

During his stay in Korea, Mr Mancham was also a judge at the 29th Mister & Miss University International Beauty Pageant which brought together students representatives with various backgrounds, from across the globe, to present a model of one world family to all people through medium of a beauty pageant. The Mister & Miss University Beauty Pageant seeks beauty not only externally but in the quality of character with which people carry out their lives. “We promote a life of service dedicated to creating harmony in all aspects of life, while at the same time encouraging the pursuit of personal excellence through the challenging of one’s limitation,” Mr Mancham told the Seychelles Review – adding “We believe that human beauty of perceived when one’s internal values are expressed through his or her external features.

Internal values are cultivated through giving and receiving love. The external features and expressions of character are inherited from one’s parents and developed through self-discipline and hard work.”

Since returning to Seychelles, Mr Mancham has received many congratulatory remarks about the Mister & Miss University International Beauty Pageant including an e-mail from Mr Jacob Ouma of the University of Kenya, who was the runner-up at this year’s contest. This is what Mr Ouma
wrote to Mr Mancham:–

“Dear Sir
Greetings from Nairobi, Kenya.

Let me start by saying that I was so honoured to have you as one of our judges in the 29th Mister and Miss University International. The whole pageant was an eye opener to us and seeing great achievers like you who still have great vision for this globe was such a challenge and motivation for us.

We came back to Africa safe and sound. We are now ready to start peace projects in our continent as National Collegeate Ambassadors for Peace. It came to my realization that it is time we as the youth take up the mantle from you without fear of failure and transform the world into a One World Family under God.

The first thing we want to accomplish is to fight against ethnicity which is one of the major crisis in Africa and our country, Kenya. We therefore are in the process of registering a peace foundation to fight against ethnicity in politics, education, corporate world and also in the society at large. We want to achieve this by having nationwide campaigns against ethnicity, use print and mass media and construction of a primary school between the Pokot and Turkana communities who have been in war from time immemorial.

This school will enable us to promote peace from the childhood level rather than struggling to bring peace among adults who have been raised in war and bitterness. To accomplish all these, we need support from any sources since we do not have the finances to carry out these projects.

Support from the Universal Peace Federation and you as a person will enable us to reach heights we never thought of ever reaching. I would also like to invite you for the launch of the foundation Sir. I promise to send you more details of the project and our proposal in the near future after we have established everything on the ground. Thank you very much for your constant support for the cause of peace. May God bless you abundantly.

Yours sincerely

Jacob Ouma
Mr. University Kenya
Mr. University International
1st Runner-Up”