“Most of them were pretty excited about it,” says Ana, a teacher at Victor Sammurtok school in Chesterfield Inlet, Nunavut.

Last spring, Ana and Glen encouraged their students to join World Vision’s 30 Hour Famine, an annual event in which thousands of young people across Canada forgo food for 30 hours to raise money and awareness for hunger and poverty. 

The eager students canvassed family members, friends, and local businesses, and even pledged some of their own money toward the cause. On the day of the event, the Leishmans planned games and a school-night sleepover for the teens. In the end, the 22 students involved raised more than $600 in donations. “That’s pretty good for our first year,” Ana says.  

Pretty good indeed, for a tiny community with an unemployment rate almost triple the Canadian average. Chesterfield Inlet is a hamlet on the western coast of Hudson Bay, a few hundred kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. It’s home to about 350 people, mostly Inuit.

In a recent Statistics Canada health survey, more than half of the people polled in Nunavut said they or someone in their family has gone hungry, or has been worried about not having enough to eat.

Famine participant Jesse Samok, 16, says he knows some families in his community don’t have enough food because many children come to the school’s breakfast program. Jesse raised nearly $200 for the 30 Hour Famine, which included $120 of his earnings from his part-time job. “I feel sorry for those kids who don’t have food and water or any money,” he says.

That kind of generosity is typical of Inuit, who traditionally place a high value on sharing. Year after year, they top the statistics for charitable giving in Canada. “People in Chesterfield Inlet are so generous,” Ana says.  “They’d rather give to someone who is less fortunate than keep what they have to themselves.”

Click here learn more about the 30 Hour Famine.