The Institute of Business Studies has been a long time sponsor of the Miss Pacific Island Pageant PNG.
This year, the institute has been the first contestant sponsor, sponsoring 19-year-old Samantha Kuase to enter the beauty pageant.
Executive Director Edward Silva says their enthusiasm and involvement in the pageant is part of their outside of academic activity to nature and empower especially young women.
“When I look at it, there's a big vacuum in leadership in PNG. I have been told that from the inception of the parliament, there have more than a thousand parliamentarians but only a three ladies out of this many.
“So we thought that by sponsoring the young ladies, their participation in the pageant will give them a leading urge, taking leadership into the female arena,” he said.
Since its establishment about 27 years ago, IBS has been involved in many activities apart from its academic role.
“We need to look at other areas as well instead of focusing only on classroom education so we’ve expanded promoting various things outside the classroom.
“This (MPIP PNG) is one of the event, we have the game as well as other various industrial events like IT.
“So we are proud of doing this and continue to be an institute that produces great people in PNG,” Silva added.
“IBS has been sponsoring contestants and for this year, Samantha was selected out of 16 contestants.
“We had a small internal beauty pageant at IBS which she won. She’s a very good outspoken person, a very good public speaker and a good presenter so we thought she would have the urge to contest.
“We are not putting her to win, but of course winning is an ultimate objective, participation and also this is a good opportunity her as a person to take part in a beauty pageant, in itself is a kind of training that helps as well so that’s a very reason we wanted to help.”
Kuase is from a mixed parentage of East Sepik, Madang and Northern Provinces and is studying Business Management at IBS.
IBS is a tertiary education provider in Papua New Guinea, offering academic and professional courses in the fields of Accounting, Business and Computing. IBS offers a combination of locally developed and International courses ranging from Certificates, Diploma’s and Degrees.