Whenever we can, we raise funds and pay for our own travel to disaster areas to help people who have been victimized by a natural or man-made disaster. In 2010 we assisted with the first phase relief effort in Haiti after the devastaing earthquake in January of that year. In 2008 we assisted Typhoon Nargis survivors in Burma through an informal aid network of Buddist monestaries. We assisted with earthquake relief near Pisco, Peru in 2007. In 2005, we were in Mississippi assisting homeless survivors of Hurricane Katrina get needed living supplies and connections to local care networks. In 2004, in Thailand, during a family vacation we narrowly missed the tsunami and our family vacation became our first experience doing on the ground disaster relief through the guidance of a local hospital and law enforcement personnel in Ranong, Thailand. We have returned to Thailand many times and since 2004, we have helped local tsunami survivors regain their livelihoods by purchasing them fishing boats, re-building a fish farm, delivering medical supplies and culturally appropriate educational supplies and starting a scholarship fund for children who were orphaned by the tsunami's destruction.

In May 2005 we purchased and delivered new boats and fishing supplies to a coastal village a population of Moken (nationless sea gypsies of the Andaman Sea) who were stranded on one of the many small islands in the Andaman Sea with no food and water. We supplied them with everything from food staples, water, rain cachement barrels, mosquito nets, sarongs, cooking supplies and a fishing boat. through the assistance of a local Thai church based in Ranong. By 2006, we have also been able to set up an educational fund for 54 orphaned children who had lost one or both of their parents to the deadly tsunami. We did this through the locally and international respected non-profit Population & Community Development Association (PDA) of Thailand.

KIRF has assisted families with needed living supplies along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi after Hurricance Katrina in the fall of 2005. Angela Kirwin, Co-Founder, worked with a local school district and local volunteer humanitarians to help identify families and children in need and deliver relief.

At the beginning of 2006, Mark Kirwin, Director of KIRF travelled to India to help out with drought relief in the northern state of Bihar. With the assistance of local Indian Charitable Trust KIRF INDIA, KIRF was able to provide sources of safe drinking water in poor rural villages after two years of drought by drilling seven new wells. In addition to the drought relief, KIRF has invested in micro-loan projects, has purchased school supplies such as curriculum text books and sports equipment as well as vocational training supplies such as sewing machines, textiles and sewing instruction.

KIRF assisted with drought relief in northern Tanzania with the assitance of local Roots & Shoots Youth Groups, a program of the Jane Goodall Insitute, during the summer of 2006.

Whenver possible (for example, when we have sufficient funds and a favorable exchange rate) KIRF incorporates sustainable development in disaster relief once immediate survival needs are met. In Thailand we purchased fishing boats and supplies for fisherman who had lost their source of livelihood when the tsunami destroyed their boats. Also, in Thailand we funded the building of a fish farm and ecological preserve guesthouse that now supports a co-operative of about 32 families.

In Peru, KIRF purchased and delivered school supplies to the Andean Village Huantan as well as textiles and food staples and toiletries needed by a battered women's shelter and sewing cooperative in Lima.

Sustainable development is very important in areas of chronic poverty and we strive to help people have a healthier and happier future by investing in captial good for small businesses and offering free literacy education through the KIRF India Educational Centers run by the Indian Charitable Trust KIRF INDIA. We also have funded a micro-loan co-operative for woman and have drilled 7 new wells in a region suffering from drought. KIRF India also plants trees and engages in recycling programs and conservation education for the local recipients of its aid.

Kirwin International Relief Foundation is dedicated to education for the people in need to build capasity and aleviate suffering caused by chronic poverty. KIRF works with KIRF INDIA , a seperate non-profit and Indian Charitable Trust with it's own finances and board of trustees, by purchasing school supplies, providing in-kind support of a sewing center for young women, and by providing drinking water through well repair at several formal and informal (outdoor) schools in rural Bihar, in northern Indian. These free schools teach reading and writing and family health to the children of socially discriminated Dalit caste (formerly known as "Untouchables") parents.

KIRF has begun a university scholarship program in Thailand that aids tsunami orphans in Ranong Province. The program is administered by the Population & Community Development Association (PDA).

In Mississippi, USA, KIRF helped school children and their families who had lost their homes to Hurricane Katrina. We worked with school teachers and administrators in the Picayune School District in southern Mississippi to identify needs and to deliver living supplies and educational supplies and sports equipement directly to families who were living outside, in trailers or in an empty rental when we found them.

In Peru, KIRF assisted homeless survivors of the devastating August earthquake disaster near Pisco with living supplies. We also ended up supplying a Kindergarten through High School, village school with culturally and academically appropriate textbooks and other school supplies in the remote Andean village of Huantan.

In Cambodia, Mark Kirwin, KIRF's Director, purchased building materials, doors and desks for an orphanage called the Lighthouse outside of Phenm Phen.

KIRF purchased and delivered supplies for a rain cachement system for an elementary school serving rural Maasai that had a dry well and no water for its students nor staff in a village near Arusha, Tanzania in the summer of 2006.

Beginning in 2008, KIRF has been supporting with school supplies an IDP ("Internally Displaced People") educational center in southern Burma near the Thail border.

We won't have a society if we destroy the environment.

– Margaret Mead