JANE GOODALL INSTITUTE

The strong coffee wasn’t the cause of the buzz at the party Saturday night for the Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, even though it was held at the East Hampton home of the chairman of Starbucks, Howard Schultz. Rather, the bright eyes and wide smiles seemed to surface whenever someone recalled their journeys to Africa.

“Africa is like peeling an onion,” Mr. Schultz’s wife, Sheri Schultz, said. “When you get there, it is absolutely beautiful. Slowly you begin to see the hardship,”

Her first trip there two years ago was with the institute. “I’d met Jane at a fund-raiser in Seattle,” Ms. Schultz said. “I told her I wanted to see Africa in depth, not just on a pretty safari. So when the opportunity came up, I went for it.” Her preparation included “reading National Geographic,” she said.

She rose daily at 5 a.m., traveled by banana boat, and saw lands stripped of everything and villages where families had nothing. “I’d seen poverty, but this kind of poverty I don’t think I’d ever experienced,” Ms. Schultz said.

The tour also showed her the breadth of the Jane Goodall Institute’s work in wildlife research, conservation, and education. As a girl growing up in Lima, Ohio, she’d once taken home 11 dogs from the pound and found homes for them. In Africa, she had instant rapport with gorillas and chimpanzees.

But it was the Yatima Trust Fund Orphanage in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that inspired her to make a philanthropic investment. She is funding six years of secondary school education for 25 children at the orphanage. “Education is critical to their success,” Ms. Schultz said. For her it was simply an extension of the work she does through the Starbucks Foundation to support children who are in foster care in the Northwest.

She is also supporting the Yatima Roots & Shoots program, which helps children to mentor and support the children in the orphanage. “Roots & Shoots teaches children to become humanitarians, so they will grow into kind, observant, and well-developed students of the world,” Ms. Schultz said.

Last month, Ms. Schultz returned to Africa with her husband and two children — Addison, 17, who wants to be a filmmaker, and Jordan, 20, who is studying journalism.

Before the trip, Addie had trouble understanding her mother’s passion for this place so far away from home. But as Addie met the chimpanzees and toured villages, she became enchanted, and started filming the land around her.

“We went into the orphanage with boxes of games and art supplies and the kids’ eyes lit up,” Ms. Schultz said. “I’d talked about Africa so much and now the kids were seeing what I was talking about.”

So what made Mom the proudest? Toward the end of the trip, Ms Schultz recounted, Addie tapped her mother’s shoulder, and said “‘Mom, get it, I understand now.'” “That was very gratifying,” Ms. Schultz said. “I tell my family, our help is like spoon feeding an ocean, but I also know, as Jane says, that the most important emotion is hope. You have to give people a reason to get up.”

The event Saturday raised more than $500,000 for the institute. The festivities took place not inside the Schultz’s Charles Gwathmey–designed house, but in a tent with touches of Africa, including chimpanzee stuffed animals on the table. Sarah McLachlan performed for the 270 guests, who took home a goody-bag filled with Starbucks Coffee and a copy of Ms. Goodall’s book “Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey” Warner).