The people behind twenty years of showing up.
KIRF is a humanitarian organization dedicated to helping others help themselves, in a respectful and environmentally sustainable way.
“Helping those in need help themselves with disaster relief, education, and legal immigration assistance for a better future.” Our founding mission statement, 2005.
It started with a tsunami we almost didn’t survive.
On December 26, 2004, Mark and Angela Kirwin were on vacation in Ranong, a small port town in southern Thailand, with their two children. They had arrived on Christmas Day and, at the last minute, decided to stay in a bungalow up in the mountains near the hot springs instead of at the Andaman Sea Resort on the beach.
The next morning, the tsunami hit. Eyewitnesses described a wall of water ten meters high crashing over the resort, destroying it and killing 170 people. The Kirwins had also planned to take a boat to the island of Ko Phayam that morning, but slept in after a long day of travel and missed it. The boat was lost at sea.
They learned what had happened from Thai television news, less than ten kilometers from where they were staying. Over the next few days, they helped injured tourists at the Ranong hospital and worked with local police and military to prepare relief packages for Thai survivors who had lost their homes and loved ones.
When they got home to Ventura, they couldn’t just move on. They founded KIRF on January 1, 2005, held a fundraiser, and Mark returned to Thailand twice that year, the first trip funding a sustainable fish farm for more than 30 families who had lost everything, along with books, art supplies, sports equipment, and clothing for children at a coastal primary school.
The second trip, in May 2005, reached a population of Moken, sea gypsies stranded on a small island in the Andaman Sea with no boats, food, or shelter. KIRF supplied generators, boats, food, clothing, and rain-catchment water tanks.
In June 2006, with fundraising help from Mark’s brother Paul, KIRF established a university scholarship fund for children who had lost one or both parents to the tsunami, administered by Thailand’s Population and Community Development Association. More than fifty orphaned children in Ranong and Png Nah provinces were identified through local school administrators, and any of them with the grades to attend college would go tuition-free.
“I was inspired by the tragedy of the 2004 tsunami because we were so lucky to have survived, and there were so many people who needed help.” Mark Kirwin, KIRF Co-Founder
From survival to a scholarship fund.
The people who keep showing up.
Angela is an anthropologist and adjunct professor in the Los Angeles Community College District. Her research interests are varied and span disaster anthropology, the foodways of endurance athletes in California, wild howler monkeys (Alouatta palliata) in Central America, social inequality in rural Bihar, India, and, most recently, Bermudian English (BerE).
She holds a master’s in anthropology from California State University, Northridge, and a bachelor’s in business administration from San Diego State University. She has worked in the outdoor industry for companies like Patagonia, for Roots & Shoots, a Jane Goodall Institute program (2005-2006), and has supported the Ventura Land Trust since 2004. Once a nationally ranked triathlete, she competed in the 1994 Ironman World Championship in Kona and the 2004 Boston Marathon.
She was inspired to start KIRF by surviving the tsunami, by meeting Dr. Jane Goodall, and by her mother-in-law, Diane Kirwin, who founded a school for underserved children in rural Bihar, India, after retiring from social work.
“Everyone is important. Anyone can make a real difference for good in the world.”
A native Missourian, Patrick has worked in humanitarian and relief efforts across Latin America since 1996, disaster relief and educational and economic development in Bolivia, Haiti, Peru, and Mexico.
His background is in Spanish, Latin American and Caribbean studies, and music, and he brings two decades of on-the-ground experience to KIRF’s work in the region.
Mark Kirwin
Mark co-founded KIRF with Angela in 2005 and worked as a civil litigator for over 30 years. He was a partner at Kirwin & Francis, LLP in Ventura until 2022, when he retired. He was a certified mediator, a past president of the Ventura County Bar Association, co-founder of the Ventura County Legal Aid Walk-in Clinic, and served on the board of the Ventura Downtown Lions Club.
He worked on climate change dispute resolution at international treaty negotiations with Mediators Beyond Borders and authored suggested treaty text submitted to the United Nations. Closer to home, he volunteered with the Rotary Club of Ventura on disaster response after Hurricane Harvey, the Baton Rouge floods, and the Nepal earthquake.
Mark was born in Bermuda in 1963, moved to Colorado Springs with his family in 1975, and has lived in California since starting law school in 1988. He holds a degree in history from the University of Colorado Boulder and a Juris Doctor from California Western School of Law in San Diego, California. Outside of work, he was a Taekwondo practitioner, earning his 2nd Dan (black belt) in 2016; an ocean swimmer, a trail runner, and an AYSO soccer coach; and had completed 20 marathons and two Ironman triathlons.
“I was inspired by the tragedy of the 2004 tsunami because we were so lucky to have survived, and there were so many people who needed help.” He is deeply missed. KIRF continues the work he started in 2005.
KIRF is a registered nonprofit organization in the state of California and a tax-exempt public charity under section 501(c)(3). Donations are tax-deductible to the full extent permitted by law.