The impact of Dr. Samantha Nutt’s War Child charity is recognized with her induction into Canada’s Walk of Fame.
Dictionaries define the word “humanitarian” as “concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare.” While concern for human welfare is noble, it is much more powerful to actually do something to improve it. And “doer” certainly describes Dr. Samantha Nutt, a medical doctor and the founder and president of renowned humanitarian organizations War Child Canada and War Child USA, and a 2025 inductee to Canada’s Walk of Fame in its Humanitarianism category.
Although we might think we are aware of the troubles that beset people in far-flung countries in crisis, whether those be Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, the Congo or Sudan, global citizen Dr. Nutt says you can only really fully appreciate the challenges first-hand, on the ground — somewhere she has been for decades.
“To wake up every day and to face the Taliban edicts and restrictions, and to find the strength and the courage to be able to persevere in the face of that, is very difficult for anyone who has not lived in that environment to fully comprehend,” says Dr. Nutt, in a recent sit-down interview with Dolce Magazine following her Walk of Fame induction ceremony. “Every day requires monumental courage.”
“You see how [disparity] Shapes people’s lives and their choices, as it’s hard to get out of that when you are born into it. Growing up where I did left me with a sense of curiosity about the world.”
It has often been said we are all the products of our environment, and that is certainly true of Dr. Nutt. A child of immigrant parents, she grew up in a multi-ethnic neighbourhood in a Toronto suburb, where she saw and interacted with people from around the world. She also saw the disparity among different ethnic groups and income levels.
She, her sister and her parents lived in South Africa and Brazil as well as Canada, and she went to university in the United Kingdom — a true citizen of the world. Recruited by UNICEF when she was just 25, she was sent to Somalia during the 1995 famine, where her group had to travel with armed guards in order to try to help people.
“My sister and I were the only two people from my family who didn’t grow up in Ontario housing, and I was the first of our family to go to university — my sister was the second,” says Dr. Nutt. “But as a kid, growing up where we did, we were always in the middle of people’s experiences with inequality, and I do think that changes you. You see that disparity, you see how it shapes people’s lives and their choices, as it’s hard to get out of that when you are born into it. Growing up where I did left me with a sense of curiosity about the world.”
As a young doctor, Dr. Nutt turned that curiosity into action. In 1999, she founded War Child Canada after working with children who were facing the violence and despair of war, when she asked herself what she was going to do about the conflict and devastation she had witnessed firsthand. Since then, War Child has helped more than five million people.
Dr. Nutt had seen how long it takes for communities to recover from conflict after the guns fall silent, and how the legacy of war stays with people for years. For 25 years, War Child has advocated for children and families in war- torn areas around the globe. The donation-funded nonprofit organization provides aid, food security, infant care, educational opportunities and even financial literacy training so that poor people can start to plan their own lives, even open their first bank account. The organization now assists more than 600,000 people annually around the world, with each of its initiatives rooted in local, community-driven programs. It now has more than 1,000 staff around the world, and 99.9 per cent are local because they know their local communities best.. But the core of the War Child effort is that it provides opportunities where before there were none.
“If you provide access points and if you provide different pathways and opportunities for kids, it opens up their world — kids who otherwise wouldn’t necessarily see themselves achieving in that way or see that those opportunities were available to them for the first time,” says Dr. Nutt. “When you present that to them and work with them so they can access those opportunities, you can accomplish extraordinary things.”
Dr. Nutt has been achieving extraordinary things most of her life. A leading authority on public health, war, international aid and foreign policy, she is one of the most intrepid and recognized voices in the humanitarian arena and a highly sought-after public speaker. With a career spent in dozens of conflict zones, her international work has benefited millions of war- affected children and families globally.
“We’re trying to change the world, and it’s actually a privilege as it doesn’t take a lot to change a person’s life.”
Dr. Nutt’s critically acclaimed début book Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies and Aid (Signal, 2011), a bracing and uncompromising account of her work in some of the most devastated regions of the world, was a No. 1 national bestseller in both hardcover and paperback. She has been appointed to both the Order of Ontario and the Order of Canada, this nation’s highest civilian honour. Time has named Dr. Nutt as one of Canada’s “Five Leading Activists.”
“We’re trying to change the world, and it’s actually a privilege as it doesn’t take a lot to change a person’s life,” says Dr. Nutt. “But people have to get involved through volunteering or even small donations, because it’s not enough to complain — you need to invest in change, because suffering is not what it means to be human.”
Dr. Nutt is certainly a humanitarian extraordinaire, someone who is doing far beyond her fair share to make the world a better place for everyone.
Dr. Samantha Nutt’s induction and the 2025 Canada’s Walk of Fame broadcast is available for streaming on CBC Gem.
INTERVIEW BY MARC CASTALDO
