Pageantry is nothing out of the ordinary for Mrs. Maltese Davis.

The drive and passion she possess to see young ladies conduct themselves with poise, intelligence and confidence didn’t just start two years ago. Mrs. Davis' journey started way back in the early 80’s when she won The Miss Bahamas Big and Beauty, and went on to Cleveland Ohio to represent the Bahamas against 51 states.

She became connected with the Marcus Garvey, which is an African Dance School, where she took up classes. She came back home and taught African dance, because she saw a need for it.

There were many dance schools that taught ballet, jazz and tapping, but no dance school teaches our cultural rooted dance.

Mrs. Davis who has been teaching and training young ladies for over 32 years, with many accomplishments under her belt. She restarted The Miss Fox Hill Pageant along with Mrs. Jan Davis, but due to work constrain Mrs. Maltese Davis who was managing the Fun Club as well as The Le’ Chic Dancers had to pull away from the pageant for a while as Mrs. Jan Davis continued to push it along for a few more years. 

Now that time has permit her, Mrs. Davis picked up where she left of with building up our young ladies within the Fox Hill Community.

Mrs. Davis felt the need to do something not only for the young ladies, but to bring about togetherness in our resilient community, that suffered a hard hit with the tragedy on 27th December, 2013 on our Freedom Park, where a number of our young leader lost their lives.

In May of 2016, Mrs. Davis got a team together to help spread the word about the pageant.

Due to the interest of so many young ladies and the different ages, thus Mrs. Davis decided to implement the three categories, The Lil Miss, Junior and Miss Category.

The pageant was such a success, with the great support of the Fox Hill community, and the persons that were honored, the pageant was able to give their families funds to assist with the children that were left behind.

Dr. Jacinta Higgs felt the need to partner with the pageant and she offered 7 scholarships, “The Core Ferguson Mackey Fox Hill History and Culture Scholarship, Shaquille Demeritte Fox Hill Youth Inspirational Scholarship and Rev. Dr. Philip Rahming Fox Hill Educational Leadership Scholarship.”

Dr. Higgs also offered a scholarship for each of the categories, which after the pageant she then awarded cash prices towards the school fees of both the Junior and the Miss Fox Hill, because they were already in a private setting and preparing for core exams. Subsequently, she offered the Lil Miss first runner up a three year scholarship.

In the words of Mrs. Maltese Davis, “Fox Hill is rich in its Afrocentric history, there are still slave’s homes 'in the community', the court house use to be around the park, and it is because we are so embedded with the culture I felt it was fitting to host this year pageant with the theme, Out Of Africa”.

This peered with the desire the pageant had which is to honor Dr. Higgs who had stood by the pageant from the beginning to the very end.

She opened the doors of her school(Akhephran) for the rehearsals, receptions, and meetings; and not one day did Dr. Higgs ask for a penny.

The contestants have had the opportunity to meet the President of the African Bahamian Association in the person of Mr. Michael Wisseh, which we will share more about the strong and rich ties that is shared here in the Bahamas.

The Enrichment pageant this year is honoring Dr. Jacinta Higgs, a Foxhillian women who values and is passionate about teaching our children, about the history of the Bahamas and especially Fox Hill.

She is committed to youth development and along with her beauty comes a loving heart for people.

This year's pageant is scheduled to be held on Sunday, November 19th, 2017 at the Dundas Center for the Performing Arts, Mackey Street; 7p.m.

Mrs. Maltese Davis