– Miss Bartica Regatta 2018, Arian Richmond

ARIAN Dahlia Richmond is not your typical teenage beauty queen – she is a young woman on a mission to empower young men and women across the country, and Bartica is her next stop.

As the newly crowned Miss Bartica Regatta 2018 Queen, she will soon extend her Guyanese Glow Programme to Bartica – an initiative aimed at boosting the self-esteem of young men and women. The 19-year-old, through her programme, will teach participants about the importance of self-care, self-awareness and self-reliance and simultaneously help them build a foundation for a beneficial source of income. Sex Education with the aim of tackling the issue of Sexual Abuse against Minors will also form a critical part of the initiative. The programme- Guyanese Girls Glow – was originally launched in Georgetown, last year, with a branch subsequently created in Linden.
Her quest to expand the programme and receive the necessary support, were her main reasons for entering the 2018 Miss Bartica Regatta Pageant. Today, part one of her mission has been successfully completed, and she is now onto the next level.

MISS BARTICA REGATTA 2018

Last Sunday, her eloquent and charismatic personality won the hearts of the judges when the much talked about Miss Bartica Regatta Pageant was held at the Basketball Court at the Community Centre Ground, Second Avenue, before hundreds of spectators.
Richmond not only won the coveted crown but copped five other titles – Miss Top Model, Miss Intelligence, Miss Body Beautiful, Miss Multimedia and the Best Gown Award. For her, it was a clean sweep.

In an exclusive interview with the Pepperpot Magazine, the Miss Bartica Regatta 2018 Queen said her new portfolio provides her with the platform needed to reach more young people.

“As a queen, I am going to have one: the support and two: their listening ears. That was my goal for entering the pageant. I knew that I had something to give and I wanted the platform to give it so it would be effective,” she explained.
In August, she will host the first Guyanese Glow Bartica Camp. Guyanese Glow Bartica will be unique when compared to the groups in Georgetown and Linden, on the grounds that it is gender neutral. “I believe that sex education has been more so targetted towards girls…but boys as much as girls are victims of sexual abuse. So when the Guyanese Glow Bartica Camp is launched this August, we are going to be doing gender-neutral activities, sexual awareness activities and gender fluid activities,” she further explained.
Reflecting on the pageant, Richmond said it was an honour to work along with the coordinators and the delegates, describing them as “warm.”

Throughout the pageant her focus was on Statutory Rape in Hinterland Communities, emphasising the need to address this social scourge that continues to cut across sections of society. Statutory Rape – sexual intercourse with a minor – is a problem that should be faced head-on, Richmond said, while underscoring the importance for governmental and non-governmental organisations and even civil society to work together to stamp out this issue that has for far too long damaging effects on children and youth. “It is a cycle and unless you identify that cycle and start putting systems in place to let it unwind it will just keep it rolling on, and we don’t need that for Guyana,” she said.

Her main supporters were her mom and siblings, best friend Aisha “A-TayJah” Jones, Paul Charles, Isaiah Luther and Mikel Andrews (costume designers), Randy Madray – the designer of her gown, Arita and Amel Griffith, Sonje Marslowe, Tia and Tianna Rickby, and Ruqayyah Boyer. Next year, Richmond hopes to compete in the Caribbean’s Next Top Model Competition.

WHO REALLY IS ARIAN DAHLIA RICHMOND?
The crown aside, Richmond is the Chief Executive Officer of ‘Cake Face by Dahlia,’ a make-up company, and a youth advocate.

Born in Bartica, Richmond, at the age of two migrated to Region Four (Demerara-Mahaica) with her mother and siblings after the passing of her father. Her father at the time was the support base for the family given that her mother, Arita Richmond, was attending the Cyril Potter College of Education (CPCE). With his passing, life for Richmond and her family became hard.

At the age of 12, while she was on the verge of entering secondary school, Richmond started cooking for her mother’s friends and family when there were celebratory events. She did it for a small fee, in addition to babysitting.
She graduated from the St. Agnes Primary School and had secured a spot at Saint Stanislaus College but by Form Three, Richmond was transferred to President’s College where her mother was teaching at the time. It was while attending President’s College that the teenager decided to sell egg balls to assist her mother.

“I was like, things hard, mommy not making enough money, I said you know what? I am going to make 30 egg balls every day and give to the canteen and let them make a profit off of it, and I started that at 15 and it worked for both of us, you know you pull in a little extra cash,” she explained.

But it was a tedious job for a school child. “After a couple of months I got tired because you had to wake up early every morning grind cassava, peel eggs, fry it and then reach to school for nine o’clock,” the Miss Bartica Regatta Queen explained.
Several months after, while she was still 15-years-old, she began selling HB cosmetics products out of her bag pack. She would later package the products in small bags.
“I went and paid $5,000 for a logo by this amazing designer name DRE, and I put my logo with the name ‘Cake Face by Dahlia’ on this gift bag, and I put five products inside, and I sold it.”

She had come up with the name Cake Face by Dahlia with her sister on a Sunday afternoon. “Why cakes, cakes are yummy, they look amazing and everybody likes them, so I was like okay, Cake Face by Dhalia,’” she explained.

BECOMING AN MUA
Her first work as a Make-up Artist (MUA) was ‘horrible,” but Richmond used it as a stepping stone to creating the woman she is today.
“The girl’s face was white, white, white and I did not have as much likes on the page (I had created) but I got 500 plus comments bashing me about the make-up, and off of that negative commentary I blew up. I started getting a whole lot of likes on my page.
“It worked out for me. I used it as fuel because now I got customers that come from Linden, from Bartica and right here in Georgetown. Today, I do makeup, I do facials, I sell the products, I do, skin care treatment, I do make-up classes, one and one and group sessions,” Richmond said with a sense of accomplishment.

A SEARCH FOR SUBSTANCE
Last August, Richmond decided she wanted to do more and decided to launch the Guyanese Girls Glow programme in Georgetown aimed at tackling the scourge of sexual abuse against girls.

“I presented it in a whole lot of ways to a whole lot of people, everyone didn’t buy it but at the Ministry of Youth, there was an amazing woman, Ms. Yvonne Cole. She helped me out with a place to house the girl who was at CARIFESTA and for two weeks I had about 30 girls from Albouystown doing Art Classes, Book studies, we did field trips, we did a lot of interaction with professionals who would talk to them and at the end of it I presented each with a certificate for participating, we did make up courses as well.”

The Miss Bartica Regatta Queen said she is simply creating the environment for young persons like herself to grow. “I just want to open them to the possibilities because if you can at least let somebody know that they are capable of doing more than what they know, they are going to go after it. It is like igniting a flame because it is not possible for me to push them to want something, I could only expose them to it.”