Hi, my name is Jessi Edwards. I’m the founder and director of Miss Abilities Organization. We’re a nonprofit that’s based out of Winchester, Virginia, and we create accessible pageants and community service opportunities for individuals with disabilities that live in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and D.C.

So what inspired me to choose this path is my oldest daughter has autism, and a few years ago we were watching the Miss America pageant together, and she saw that one of the contestants also had autism. She was inspired by that young lady and said, you know what? I could be Miss America one day. And I genuinely believe that she could be.

But then I started to think, what about young men and women with Down’s syndrome or cerebral palsy, or different abilities that might exclude them from mainstream pageants, and I got so angry. I was so frustrated that they wouldn’t be able to participate. And instead of just sitting in that anger and being frustrated, I decided, fine, I’ll make something in our area. I’ll make something that’s accessible for young men and women to be able to shine and to be able to show the world just how truly amazing and beautiful they are.

This year, in 2019, is our fourth annual pageant. It is such an amazing event, and I’m so excited that we’ve grown so much in the past four years. To start, our individuals have an interview with their judges and then once the pageant itself begins, they do their showcase. Showcase Your Ability, which is kind of our version of talent. Some of our participants this year will be singing. We’ll have dancing. We have somebody doing a stand-up routine. We have a few people that are gonna be reading books, showing off artwork, anything that shows us what makes them special. And then we will have our evening gown category, which is a lot of fun.

Our individuals have the opportunity to wear whatever they feel beautiful in, whether that’s a suit or a dress or an Elsa costume or a sports jersey. It’s whatever they feel amazing in. And one really great thing that I love about our program is that there is no first, second, third runner up. We have one queen in each age category, one king in each age category, and everyone is else is crowned princess or prince so that they’re on the royal court no matter what.

So some of the ways that our participants benefit from our program is that we help our participants with public speaking. That’s typically not something that the public expects from people with different abilities, which isn’t right. And so what we try to do is we try to give them the confidence that they need, the tools that they need to succeed. And we also, one of the other things that they benefit from is that we’re getting them out in the community volunteering, giving back to their communities. Not letting the fact that they have a disability stop them from making a difference in the lives of others.

One of the things that I love about Winchester and the fact that Miss Abilities Organization is founded in Winchester is that we’ve had so much support from the area, from the community, whether we are having our main event every March or whether we’re having a fundraising event to help support our individuals, like our upcoming Children’s Business Fair. That’s one of the fundraising events that we do twice a year now, and the support from the Winchester community has been amazing.

So we’ve had many success stories coming from Miss Abilities Organization. Two of the major ones that come to mind are one of our princesses, Anna, when she first came to us a few years ago, she was very nervous about being on stage. And over the past two years since she’s been with us, her confidence has grown tremendously. She’s gone from being nervous to being able to be on camera. She’s been interviewed talking about Miss Abilities Organization. She’s been an ambassador for the program. She started reading books to local libraries, and she’s just grown so much. It’s truly amazing.

Another one of our success stories is that in the Miss Abilities Organization, all of our individuals are teamed up with buddies. And these buddies, sometimes it’s just a person that’s only with them that day, and they don’t necessarily stay really close and connected. But another one of our girls became very, very close with her buddy, and over the past few years, they’ve gotten so close that they’ve made visits to each other. They live about three hours away and they’ve driven out of their way to meet with each other. To have lunches with each other. And to see that kind of connection and to be able to provide that opportunity has been an amazing thing.

So one of the fundraising events that we started in October of last year that we’re planning on doing twice a year now is the Winchester Children’s Business Fair. Miss Abilities Organization has teamed up with Katie Moody from Homespire Mortgage and together we’re creating this amazing event for young entrepreneurs ages six to 17 to create their own product, to create their own service, that they’re going to learn to grow into a company and present to the public, and be able to promote and make money off of their own products and services. And Miss Abilities Organization will be there with our queens and kings, princes and princesses to help encourage public speaking for our participants and it’ll also be helping by promoting our young entrepreneurs in the area as well. This event is going to be April 13th, 2019 in the Old Town Walking Mall, and we would love to have you come out and support not only the young entrepreneurs but also Miss Abilities.

I would have to say that one of the hardest things about founding Miss Abilities Organization has been that my position is a volunteer position. We don’t have any paid staff in our organization so that we can give as much to the program as possible. Finding sponsors can sometimes be tricky, but we’ve been very grateful that the community has supported us as much as they have. If you or your business is interested in sponsoring, please visit MissAbilities.org/sponsors. We would love to have you be a part of the Miss Abilities family. If you’re interested in volunteering or making a donation to help support our program and help us prepare for our fifth annual Miss and Mr. Abilities event in March 2020, please visit MissAbilities.org or you can call 540-303-1700. Or you can email us at MissAbilities@gmail.com.