Carrie Oelberger

Where she was in 1994: City Year Boston Corps Member

Where she is today: Co-Founder and Executive Director, The Jifunze Project (Tanzania, East Africa)

“My path to founding the Jifunze Project grew out of my love of teaching which can be directly traced to my time with City Year and the students I taught at Trotter Elementary School in Roxbury. City Year taught me the value of giving and receiving feedback to improve teamwork and working towards a common goal. Whether at Trotter Elementary School as a young idealist or in East Africa as an eager social entrepreneur, I’ve had to use interpersonal skills I learned at City Year to turn the challenge of working with a diverse team into an indispensable asset that can be utilized to solve problems creatively.”

Idealistic might be a fitting description for someone who takes a year off before college to teach in Boston; for someone who takes a second year off to teach in East Africa, courageous may be the more appropriate adjective choice. To describe the adventurous spirit and social impact of Carrie Oelberger, one may need to consult a Thesaurus in the Community Education Resource Centres she helped found in Tanzania eight years ago.

As a secondary school teacher in 1997, she experienced first hand the educational inequalities that plagued children and adults in under-served regions of rural Tanzania. When Carrie came back to the States, she wrote a grant and received the Samuel Huntington Public Service Award to start her own non-profit the Jifunze Project before returning to Tanzania to implement her vision. The mission of the Jifunze Project is to enable individuals living in an under-served part of rural Tanzania to attain a quality education which will open their minds, expose them to other worlds and create possibilities for self-sufficiency. Named after the Swahili word for learning “Jifunze” directly translates as, “to teach oneself.” The Jifunze programs provide a space in which any individual can teach themselves with the assistance of books, computers, games, multi-media technology and access to certified teachers.

Before studying history at Haverford College, Carrie completed a year of service with City Year Boston where her love for teaching blossomed in a 1st and 2nd grade classroom at Trotter Elementary School in Roxbury. Like a domino effect, this teaching experience fueled her curiosity to teach in Tanzania, which in turn, drove her passion to found the Jifunze Project. Currently, Carrie has moved back to the states, where she continues to serve as Executive Director, providing international support through fundraising, hiring staff and volunteers, and providing on-going training. Carrie has recently returned to her alma mater to lead Haverford College’s Center for Peace and Global Citizenship where she inspires students to broaden their international perspective and creates vehicles for them “to teach oneself” about the injustices of the world.

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