Everywhere we’ve shown up.
KIRF works through small, trusted local partners in eleven countries, funding what’s actually needed instead of shipping in an entire operation.
Eleven countries. One approach.
Where it started. A fish farm, fishing boats, and a university scholarship fund for children who lost parents to the 2004 tsunami.
Earthquake assessment and monsoon-proof roofing for families in Kathmandu after the 2015 quake.
Relief supplies for families on Panay Island after Typhoon Haiyan tore through in 2013.
First-phase relief for families displaced by the devastating 2010 earthquake.
Relief support after Typhoon Nargis struck the country in 2008.
School textbooks for a remote Andean village, and micro-loans for a battered women’s shelter in Lima.
Free education, water wells, and a vocational sewing center for rural families in Bihar.
Drought relief and school water systems in Arusha, in partnership with the Jane Goodall Institute.
In-kind supplies and building materials for a home for street children in Phnom Penh.
Hurricane Katrina relief, wildfire recovery, and two decades of youth service projects in Ventura.
Supplies and holiday gifts for an orphanage and a battered women’s shelter in Tijuana.
What showing up actually looks like.
Skipping the middlemen in Phnom Penh
In 2005, co-founder Mark Kirwin and his brother Stephen traveled to Phnom Penh after finishing tsunami relief work in Thailand. Wary of the city’s crowded aid economy, they chose to evaluate needs in person instead of funding through intermediaries. Working with a local café owner’s informal network, they delivered building supplies and food staples directly to a home for street children outside the city.
An eight-hour drive into the Andes
KIRF has worked in Peru since the 2007 earthquake near Pisco, delivering textbooks and supplies to a K-12 village school in Huantan, a remote Andean community reached by an eight-hour mountain drive from Lima. In the capital, KIRF also partners with a shelter for battered women, providing micro-loans that help mothers rebuild financial independence.
Close to home, in Tijuana
Just across the border from California, KIRF has delivered supplies and holiday gifts to an orphanage and a battered women’s shelter in Tijuana. Trips have occasionally been paused when local safety conditions required it, but the relationships with local partners have continued.
A drought, and a Roots & Shoots partnership
KIRF’s connection to Tanzania grew out of co-founder Angela Kirwin’s work with the Jane Goodall Institute’s youth program, Roots & Shoots. In Arusha, KIRF helped a local Roots & Shoots group respond to a severe drought that was drying up school wells and keeping kids out of class, and later supported a tree-seedling reforestation project to fight soil erosion.
Some of our biggest stories, like the tsunami that started KIRF and our ongoing work in Bihar, India, get the full telling elsewhere on the site.