Laguna Beach man to run Tanzania educational foundation

From his days at Laguna Beach High School, it wasn’t hard to predict that Jake Wheeler might have a positive influence on the world.

Wheeler was the school’s student body president and male athlete of the year. After graduating in 2004, he went on to Atlanta’s Emory University for a degree in psychology and African American studies and then earned a master’s in global human development from Georgetown.

A trip to Tanzania in 2008 helped define his career path even before he started grad school. Now with degrees in hand, Wheeler is not leaving academics behind. The 28-year-old was recently named associate director of the Indigenous Education Foundation of Tanzania.

The nonprofit organization is dedicated to providing free, high-quality education to secondary school students who otherwise could not afford it. Wheeler will oversee all organizational aspects of Orkeeswa School, the institution he first visited in 2008.

The seeds of this choice were planted earlier, on a trip to Africa with his mother, a Methodist minister, when Wheeler was 13. The teen witnessed the cultural barriers to higher education on a visit to Zimbabwe and it affected him.

“That kind of sparked my interest,” Wheeler said, noting he also traveled to Cuba and Fiji in similar outreach journeys with his mother.

“Then when I was in college at Emory, we went to teach for three months in Tanzania,” he continued. “I loved it and I wanted to continue to get back there.”

Wheeler stayed active in the school’s progress before he was recruited by Executive Director Peter Luis to run the operation after he established his credentials. As director of Orkeeswa, he’ll spend about four months a year in Tanzania and the rest in Washington, D.C., and other places where policymaking and fundraising efforts take him.

His grad school experience at Georgetown, which included work with the United Nations, the World Bank and a number of multinational political institutions, help inform his decision in a roundabout way.

“I just felt that after a couple years in D.C. and in that industry, I got a little bit disconnected. I just wanted to get connected to something again,” Wheeler said. “I had an experience that kind of left an indelible impression when I was younger and I just wanted to get back to that.”

More than providing educational opportunity, Wheeler strives to have an effect on the culture in Tanzania. The school currently serves 226 boys and girls in grades 7 to 11. Nearly all are from the Maasai tribe, which Wheeler said has been marginalized in Tanzania.

Dressed in smart school uniforms that include slacks, collared shirts and red sweaters, students walk an average of 6 kilometers to school, or 3.7 miles, he said. Wheeler said Orkeeswa discourages boarding students because being somewhat cloistered like that would prevent them from spreading what they learn.

“When they come to school, we want them to engage in a high-quality education,” he explained, “and then we want them to return home, because that’s where they can engage with their family and impact their family.”

The school’s annual budget is just under $700,000, with most of the money raised through private donations.

The goal, Wheeler said, is to help students develop critical thinking and leadership skills that can have long-term benefits in Tanzania and beyond.

“We are giving them opportunities to keep them moving, to pursue education and pursue what they want to,” he said.