User:Women4progress

 Miss Progress International  is an international beauty pageant that stands for promoting projects about Health, Human Rights and Environment. The format was created in Italy in 2010.

The main purpose of the event is the realization of the winning project by executing, in collaboration with the winner, a fundrising aimed to cover the costs.

The current Miss Progress International title holder is Francesca Speranza, from Italy, thanks to her environmental project, self-financed through the sale of jams produced in a building confiscated from the camorra in Caserta, her city, by planting fruit trees and realizing the concept of urban agriculture. She was crowned on September 17, 2022 in the Messapia Hotel & Resort of Santa Maria di Leuca, Italy.

Organization
The organization is managed by  Associazione Culturale In Progress  of Carosino (Italy), which also holds the copyrights of the format. Each  National Director  (the licensees) choose, through regional and national heats, the contestants who will take on the role of their national Ambassador of Progress.

History
The first edition of Miss Progress International was held from September 19th to 26th, 2010 in Puglia, Italy, with the support of the European Union, and the moral patronage of the Italian Ministry of Tourism, the Regione Puglia, and the municipalities of Taranto and Ostuni.

Due to serious problems of health faced by one of the founders of the Associazione Culturale In Progress, the event was suspended until 2014 when the second edition took place from May 9 to 18, again in Puglia, and obtained, among the others, the formal appreciation of the President of the Italian Republic, Giorgio Napolitano.

All of the eight editions of Miss Progress International took place in Puglia, the region defined by the National Geographic as one of the twenty most beautiful tourist destination in the world. The Covid-19 pandemic obliged the organizers to suspend the event and postpone the eighth edition from 2020 to 2022.

Titleholders
There is one winner for each theme and the contestant who obtains the higher overall score wins the title. Since the second edition, the winner of the title of Miss Progress Cultural Integration is elected by the contestant themselves who vote for the one among them who best represents the real meaning of integration: peaceful coexistence, friendliness and congeniality.