7th March Miss World Alexandria Mills guest hosts

Miss World Alexandria Mills was in Des Moines at the weekend taking part in the 37th Annual Variety Telethon. The 2 day televised fundraising event saw donations reach a total of $3,016,441, with an increased number of pledges compared to the previous year.

Alexandria was joined by Mr World Kamal Ibrahim and Miss World Africa Emma Wareus for the fundraising weekend, which also saw them pay a visit to the Youth Emergency Shelter and Services (YESS), a beneficiary of Variety of Iowa's work to see how the money raised is put to good use. The centre houses nearly 1000 children over a typical year, and last year received $35,000 from Variety donations. They also visited the ChildServe centre which provides specialised paediatric health care services for more than 2,200 children in Iowa.

Variety's first telethon in 1975 raised $150,000, and subsequent telethons have since gone on to raise a combined total of over $80 million for children across Iowa.