Ms Malone was presented with the Outstanding Philanthropy Award by the Miss World BVI Organisation at the 2019 Miss World BVI Premier’s Beauty with a Purpose Philanthropic Award and Coronation Dinner held at Scrub Island on Saturday, August 31, 2019.

There she took the few minutes afforded her for response to speak on the troubling issue. “What I am doing now is helping students who did not get a secondary education and those students, especially our males, I am saddened to see what is happening to them. I am wondering where are we going wrong with our males in this territory?”

Ms Malone explained that too many males go to the Alternative Secondary Education Programme but, “They do not remain. I don’t know why, we tried everything that we can.”

She said last term she wrote a proposal for a programme especially for males and hope it can be implemented to "see if we can save some of our male students.”

She alluded to the male as being the seed of the territory and without them having a sound development, “What is going to happen in our community? Those are the things that bother me as a early childhood educator.”

Who are children imitating?

On another note, she said she loves watching little children grow and become what they would like to be. “Too many times we force them to become what they do not want to become and that is when they do not perform.”

She stressed further, “If we allow them to grow and develop as they would like to develop we would have beautiful people in the world.”

According to Ms Malone, although technology is now a big part of life today, she remains worried about it, “Young children learn from observing adults, imitating adults, using their environment to learn, using the people around them to learn.”

“I am saddened when I see so many little children have a device in their hand. What do we expect of them? I do not know but we need to think about it and think about our children’s development. Who are they imitating? Is it the caregiver in the day care centre or is it their parents? They need to imitate positive people and observe positive things and then we would have a much better world,” Ms Malone reasoned.

Present to congratulate Ms Malone, on behalf of Premier and Minister of Finance Honourable Andrew A. Fahie (R1), was  Minister for Education, Culture, youth Affairs, Agriculture and Fisheries Dr The Honourable Natalio D. Wheatley (R7), who alluded to her close relationship with Premier Fahie. “I know you enjoy a very special relationship with Honourable Andrew Fahie especially as he started the Alternative Secondary Education Programme and appointed you to lead that.”

The Education Minister congratulated Ms Malone for having done an excellent job with the programme.