The world of pageants has changed from what it was before.

It is no longer just about beauty and the current reigning Miss Botswana Palesa Molefe is a living testament to that, she is both beauty and brains.

Nounouche recently caught up with the gorgeous young lady to find out how her reign has been like been so far.

“Honestly speaking the whole reign has been very different, but I guess everyone has their own unique journey and I have been trying to embrace change.”

“But in a nutshell, it has been exciting and as well as an upward battle and it has been such a lesson because I am learning every day and part of my strength comes knowing that I don’t know everything and appreciating that fact that I am learning,” she said.

Although her reign is different from her predecessors, the 22-year-old did not let that deter her, she has been hard at work on her mental health campaign which is targeted at school children around Botswana.

“Mental health is an important conversation because it affects us all and it is something that I had to come to terms with from a very young age,” she said.

“This is because from a very young age I had to unlearn bad habits of coping with my mental health – understanding your emotions and how to regulate them is very important for young people. That is why I decided to target my campaign at school kids to teach them while they are still young that such things exist.”

As a strong advocate for mental health issues, when asked how she is going to continue with her passion project after her reign she shared that she has a lot of contingency plans in place as her reign has taught her how to efficiently package a project that you have passion for and ensure that it lives.

She also shared that from here on, through her NGO called Botswana United Artists, Palesa who is an actor and TV producer wants to create safe spaces and circles for creatives in her country.

“I want to do this by ensuring that certain policies are put in place to help us as artists thrive in our very own space because sometimes you would find that it is easier for someone who comes from another country to thrive as compared to us who have lived our entire lives there and the idea of creating these policies is ensuring that what belongs to us be ours,” she said.