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Rise Against Hunger Partners with School and Hospital in Niger to Provide Aid to Refugees

on  June 20, 2019

Located about 1,000 miles from the capital of Niger in Sub-Saharan Africa is a small town known as Maine-Soroa (Maine). In the 1960s, two Peace Corps volunteers, Bill and Barbara Kirker, found themselves in the isolated and poverty-stricken town of Maine, where most of the town’s 900 residents were living on less than $1 per day.

Kirker hospital in Maine
After noticing the lack of medical care in the area, the Kirkers decided to take action and build a hospital in Maine from the ground up. The Kirkers took on full-time residence in Maine and treated patients on a daily basis for the duration of their Peace Corps stint, remaining in Niger until a coup forced them to return to the U.S.Fast forward to 2007 and the Kirkers were granted permission by government officials in Niger to return to Maine. Upon the Kirker’s arrival, they saw the need to expand the hospital they had originally built. In three years, the Kirkers expanded the hospital from 42 to 164 beds and established the Second Chance School, a primary school for children ages 8-13 who have not yet received an education. Currently, the Second Chance School has a 90% graduation rate of students passing their accelerated programs and entering into a traditional school system.
Students hold diplomas outside of the Second Chance school
Bill and Barbara’s legacy has expanded far beyond Niger and the town of Maine. The couple inspired friends to start the nonprofit organization, KAMRA — the Kirker African Medical Relief Association — to support their activities in Maine, Niger and other parts of Africa. In order to facilitate KAMRA’s support in Maine, a group of Nigerian citizens established the Kirker Foundation in Niger.
Laptops were sent to the Second Chance School in 2010 by KARMA
Aside from the compelling legacy that the Kirkers created is an exciting opportunity for Rise Against Hunger to provide emergency aid with our impact partner, MAP International, to the hospital and the Second Chance School. Maine is home to 20,000 residents and refugees. Most of the refugees are displaced from Nigeria in response to extreme violence brought on by Boko Haram, a terrorist group.The hospital in Maine supports 26 clinics in the surrounding towns and sees roughly 200 outpatients each day. In response to the overwhelming need for aid in this area, Rise Against Hunger has sent a container of meals to the KAMRA/Kirker Foundation to be utilized in the hospital in Maine and for students in the Second Chance School. Patients at the hospital will also receive an extra meal for their caregiver who in most cases will stay with them during their entire hospital stint in response to the thinly stretched medical staff.”My hope and fervent belief is that the Kirker Hospital will now be able, with the combination of MAP medicines and a daily Rise Against Hunger meal, to achieve ever-improving patient outcomes,” said Vincent Farley, president of KAMRA. “Maine is an isolated, forgotten place in the world, but it has some of the kindest people who have welcomed thousands of refugees.”Currently, the container of meals and MAP medicines is in Niger, awaiting transportation to Maine. There are no formal roads from Niger to the town of Maine and the path is treacherous. As it stands, the meals will be distributed in the hospital since the Second Chance School is on summer break. Upon successful implementation, Rise Against Hunger will explore sending an additional container for the start of the school year. With the help of a volunteer trucker and money for fuel, Rise Against Hunger, MAP International, KAMRA and the Kirker Foundation, patiently await the much-needed arrival of aid.

7/30/2019 Update:

Good news! Rise Against Hunger meals have made it all the way to Maine. The meals are being cooked in an outdoor kitchen and served to patients of the Kirker hospital. Currently, a kitchen is being built at the school for when students return from summer break.

About the Author

Maddie Laing is the PR and Communications Specialist on the Rise Against Hunger Marketing Team. Maddie manages communication between Rise Against Hunger and news outlets across the globe.

More Posts by Maddie Laing

Strength, Stability And Hope

The gift that filled Nelly’s table.

“We were yielding very little, and the crops could not sustain us the whole year,” Nelly remembers. As a mother of seven and a farmer with two decades of experience, the stress of inconsistent yields was all-consuming. A poor harvest not only strained her family financially, but also limited their own meals to just two a day. Their story reflects that of many in their fishing and farming village near a lake in the Karonga district of northern Malawi. Here, heavy rainfall makes conventional farming methods nearly impossible. The entire village is, quite literally, saturated in food insecurity — a reality that leaves families struggling to survive season after season without a dependable source of nourishment.

In 2019, Nelly began participating in Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience, a sustainable agriculture project implemented by Rise Against Hunger in partnership with the Foundation for Community Support Services (FOCUS). The project works with 3,100 smallholder farmers in Malawi’s Karonga and Mzimba districts to strengthen food and nutrition security by improving production methods, nutrition practices and household income.

Just one year later, Nelly was ready to expand the variety of crops on her farm. What land once only produced maize began to flourish with sesame, cowpeas, rice and groundnuts during the rainy season (summer), as well as maize and vegetables during the dry season (winter). Through climate-smart agriculture training, she learned new techniques like manure making, pit planting and mulching, crop rotation and intercropping. Equipped with these tools, Nelly’s farm began to thrive.

After the 2023–2024 growing season, she sold enough produce to purchase an ox cart. Her harvests in 2024-2025 season yielded over 500 pounds of crops, including 22 bags of groundnuts, seven bags of maize, 12 tins of sesame and three bags of rice. With this surplus, she was able to invest in a motorbike, which she now uses to transport African doughnuts (mandasi) that she cooks and sells — creating yet another source of income for her family.

The transformation reaches far beyond her finances. Nelly now has the stability to provide for her husband and children. “I am able to eat different food types, pay school fees for my children and fulfill the visions that I have made with my family,” she beams. “I am now sleeping peacefully without any fears of food or paying school fees for the children.”

Her leadership has also grown. Today, Nelly serves as a leader in the Harvesting Prosperity and Resilience project, teaching other farmers in her district to adopt climate-resilient, labor-saving practices. By sharing her knowledge, she is multiplying her impact — empowering her neighbors to experience the same transformation she has achieved.

Across Nelly’s community, food and economic security are on the rise. Lombani, a government extension officer for the region, explains, “I can see the community is being transformed in the sense that in the area, there is food, income and nutrition security. Development is also happening at the household level.”

Nelly reflects on what it means to invest in holistic programs that address the root causes of hunger: “We are now healthy people. Children are going to school after eating their breakfast, having high yields and different types of crops due to conservation agriculture practices. With the support from the project, we have food, and we can access other food items from the market after selling our produce.”

This is the gift that fills: a future full of stability, strength and hope. It fills tables with food, families with security and communities with the resources to thrive. It’s an investment in futures rooted in resilience and hope.