Inspired by two mission trips to the Phillippines, Joanna Maniti was standing in front of her Univ. of Southern California class explaining her idea for a hypothetical non-profit to help homeless children and orphans she had met when she had a ‘lightbulb moment'.

Rather than hypothesize about a non-profit that would help the archipelago's orphans, she decided to go ahead and start one herself, and so was born Cherish Hearts International.

"I had this reflection of, 'Why haven't I actually started this during my time at USC?'" Maniti told the Daily Trojan. "Right after the class, I just sent out a bunch of emails to old contacts of mine in the Philippines, and the first person who responded ended up being our first partnership within Cherish."

In 2016 and 2018, Maniti visited the island of Mindanao, and was devastated to see the conditions of the unhoused and orphaned children living on the streets. She volunteered at a children's ministry, but eventually her trip had to end and she returned to the US.

She decided to major in business, and in the fall of 2020 took a class at USC on how to design and run a non-profit, which she turned into Cherish Hearts International, which acts as a liaison to international business stakeholders to uncover areas of opportunity for the building of schools and shelters, the first of which opened in the summer of 2022 on Mindanao.

Consisting of four classrooms, two washrooms, and a kitchen, the orphanage was built with the help of All the World Outreach and other donors.

Despite all this effort, Maniti was not able to set foot in the orphanage, meet the children there, or see how the classes were going, until a full three years after the project was started due to heavy government lockdowns and travel restrictions.

"We've been trying to take a trip there for the past three years, so being able to go this past year was a milestone for Cherish," Maniti said. "[The trip] just further showed the need of this project. There are a ton of street children out there who just don't have homes to go to or family members. It was a lot of emotions at once."

Interviewing Maniti for the USC newspaper, Ava Satterfield at the New Trojan heard from Maniti that she wished she had got into non-profit work at the level of undergraduate, and suggested that anyone interested should get involved as early as possible.

Anyone looking to get in touch about donations or collaborations can visit the website here, or message Maniti on her LinkedIn.

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