Chandler teen helps needy kids in Angola | Neighbors

Mahwan Muna and her friends looked at what was happening in their home country of Angola and didn’t like some of what they saw. 

So, Mahwan and her friends started their own nonprofit, Criança Feliz Angola, while she lived in Angola to try and help kids like them that did not have what they had.

“You can see that it’s not really in transition,” said Mahwan, who now lives in Chandler and just graduated from ASU Preparatory Academy. “This building looks really good, it looks really fancy, and then you have people living in houses that aren’t really houses.

“We are kids, and we see kids our age that are not able to have three full meals a day or TV, for example. I guess we just as a group said someone has to do it, because we don’t see no one doing it. “

They noticed there were some international groups that were trying to help. 

“We don’t see anyone from our own country,” she said. “One of my friends, his name is Pedro, he said that we could be the ones helping.”

“The first idea we had, since we always play soccer, is we should do something with soccer,” Mahwan said. “We actually ended up doing a competition with multiple teams who paid to play and we gave them a prize. We had people pay for tickets to watch the competition. And we’re selling candies, selling sodas, everything. That’s how we got our first donation.”

The nonprofit is now supported by the Angolan government, the first one to earn that status. They buy canned foods and clothing and distribute them to children in need.  They also support orphanages in Angola.

Mahwan’s mother was working in Kansas and her father was born in New Jersey but was living in Cameroon when they met and fell in love. After Mahwan was born, the family moved from Nigeria, to Cameroon, to Ivory Coast. However, Mahwan said most of the time they were in Angola.

Once Mahwan was ready for high school, her father thought she would get a better education in the United States. Her older sister was attending Arizona State University, so that is how she ended up in Chandler.

Still, even being far from Angola, she remained involved in the nonprofit that she and her friends started when they were still young.

She continues to handle marketing for the nonprofit and pitching in wherever she can. In her spare time, Mahwan mentors preschool students and serves as a counselor at her church.

Mahwan said when she first started taking classes in Arizona, it was a difficult transition. She had been taking online courses previously and found the in-person schedule a big change.

That’s what led her to switch to ASU Preparatory Academy, a K-12 school that includes ASU Prep Digital, which offers online courses.

Next, she’s planning to attend ASU Thunderbird School of Global Management and study international relations. She speaks four languages, French, Portuguese, Lingala and English.

Mahwan said the Thunderbird School was not her first choice.

“I was so focused on American University of Paris because I would be close to my family, to my nonprofit,” she said. “I have a lot of friends in Europe.

“My head was like, OK, I’m going to Paris, I got accepted, I was really excited. Then I got accepted to ASU Thunderbird.”

Her father kept coming up with ways to make her think about Thunderbird, even though it appeared her mind was made up. That included meeting a friend of his who had a daughter considering the same schools.

Finally, it was a conversation with her mother that got her to think about staying in the Valley .

“I realized that because you just opened my eyes,” Mahwan said. “She said I will always have the opportunity to go to Paris, to go to other places, to see my family, but my education comes first. And if this program is better, I should think about going there.”

The nonprofit, Criança Feliz Angola, can be reached at criancafelizangola.org.