Giving to others is often difficult. Being generous is not natural. It’s especially hard when you yourself do not have much. These three stories put the spotlight on different groups of people who have given to others in inspiring ways—even though they didn’t have much to give.

(1) Some Wampum for you, Lads

In 1847, Ireland was in the middle of the Great Potato Famine. The country’s staple crop was potatoes, so when a blight came through and ravaged the potato crops, it resulted in mass starvation and disease. Estimates say that about 1 million people died from the famine, and another million emigrated out of Ireland to escape starvation. The country’s population fell by 25 percent.

The news of the terrible suffering in Ireland spread into mainland Europe and other parts of the world. Eventually the news worked its way to the Choctaw Indians.

It had only been about 15 years earlier that the Choctaw had been removed from Mississippi, Alabama and Florida—which is mostly where the tribe had lived for many generations—and they had been relocated to what is now called Oklahoma. (The name Oklahoma, in fact, comes from the Choctaw language, with okla meaning “people” and humma meaning “red.”)

The relocation had been difficult for the Choctaw. They were the first of several Native American tribes to make the long, sad journey along what we now call the Trail of Tears.

The winter during which most of them made the trek was one of the coldest on record, and the food supplies and clothing they had were inadequate. Many Choctaws did not survive the trip. Of those that did survive, most faced severe hardships once they arrived in Oklahoma—trying to build new homes, farms and other establishments.

It was after the Choctaw had been in Oklahoma for only 15 years that they heard news of the people of Ireland starving en masse.

The Choctaws’ memory of their own starvation and struggle was still very fresh, so they had great empathy when they heard this story from across the ocean. And they decided to take action to help the Irish. These were people of very meager resources, but individuals from the tribe scraped together all they could and made donations totaling $170. They sent this money to assist the people of Ireland.

Plugging these numbers into an inflation calculator shows that $170 in 1847 would be worth the modern equivalent of $4,742. That is a sizable donation—especially coming from people who had so little to give.

Ireland, for its part, has never forgotten the generosity of the Choctaws who helped them in their hour of desperation. Last year, the Irish town of Midleton in County Cork unveiled a beautiful, massive, stainless steel sculpture of nine eagle feathers as a monument to the Choctaws’ generosity. The sculpture is called Kindred Spirits. The artist who created it said the feathers are meant to show that even when the Choctow people were fragile like a feather, and in need themselves, they still displayed great courage and humanity in helping the Irish.

(2) We ‘Herd’ You Are in Need

In the tragic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, radical Islamists killed more than 3,000 Americans.

The world was deeply shocked by what had happened, but there was an outflowing of support and sympathy for the United States from countries—and groups of people—all over the world.

Israel declared a full day of mourning. Canada commenced its famous Operation Yellow Ribbon.

In England, the Queen ordered her troops to break with age-old tradition during the Changing of the Guard, there at Buckingham Palace, and to play the U.S. national anthem during the ceremony, for the first time ever!

Australia invoked the anzus treaty. Ireland shut down for a full day of mourning, as did the Czech Republic, Croatia and Turkey. Trams and buses in Greenland, Sweden and Norway all came to a halt out of respect for America’s victims.

Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan offered America use of their airspace in order to help bring the culprits to justice. Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan did the same. In Russia, television and radio stations went silent to commemorate the dead. In China, tens of thousands of people visited the U.S. Embassy, leaving flowers, cards, wreaths and hand-written notes of condolence.

Financial support was offered to America by nations as unlikely as Cuba, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. Many people in Kuwait lined up at their local Red Crescent hospitals to donate blood to those who had been injured.

All over the world, U.S. allies and other nations and groups of people offered their support and sympathy in all kinds of different ways.

But there was one group of people that no one would have expected to help. It’s a group whose name almost never finds its way into international affairs: the Masai tribe of Kenya.

Skyscrapers, such as those that were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, are not a familiar sight to the Masai. For them, the tallest things on the horizon are the muna trees, the acacias and maybe the giraffes that eat from them.

But a student from the Masai tribe happened to be visiting New York City when the attacks happened, and when he returned and told his people about the terrible tragedy that he had witnessed, they really wanted to help. And they wanted to do so by giving the United States something that is very precious in the lives of the Masai.

And that is cows.

Cows are one of the most cherished things that a Masai can offer as a gift. The Masai view them as much more than just a source of milk and meat. A groom pays the father of a woman he wants to marry in the currency of cows. The Masai make a lot of their clothing from cow leather. They also use cow dung to protect the outside of their dwellings, and they use bovine products for many other purposes.

The cow is, in many ways, the center of life for the Masai. For that reason, they wanted to give cows to the suffering Americans.

The tribespeople pooled their resources and donated 14 of their healthiest and most prized cows to America as a gesture of sympathy.

Most Masai people live on less than $1.25 per day. And a cow, for them, costs about $150. So 14 cows for them represents a substantial amount of money.

So this gift was no small thing. The U.S. sent a delegate to a ceremony to receive the generous gift. Thousands of Masai were there, and many held up banners saying: “To the people of America,” “We are touched by your loss,” and “We give these cows to help you.”

(3) ‘Their Children Are Our Children’

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina wrecked the Gulf Coast of the United States, devastating many communities, especially in the New Orleans area. Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane, and was the costliest natural disaster in the history of the U.S. It was also one of the deadliest, with more than 1,400 people killed.

News of this terrible disaster spread around the world quickly, and eventually reached a group of women in Kireka, Uganda, which is in west-central Africa.

Kireka is a slum that overlooks Uganda’s capital city, Kampala. And Kireka is a one-industry town: The men strip-mine boulders from the town’s quarries, and the women take those boulders and shatter them into rocks about the size of marbles so they can be used in construction projects. The women do this arduous work by hand, pounding each boulder with hammers and chisels. For this back-breaking work—working more than eight hours a day—the women each earn the equivalent of $1.20 per day.

But after they heard about Hurricane Katrina and all the communities that had been ripped apart by it, 200 of these Ugandan women decided to save up their earnings and send them to the victims in New Orleans.

They collected just under $900 and sent it to America. The magnitude of that sacrifice is hard to fathom when you consider that these 200 women were just barely eking out a living, barely surviving. In many cases, they were single mothers, supporting several children, on that meager wage. Yet when they heard about people in need on the other side of the planet, they found a way to sacrifice.

They heard about people suffering, and took action to help them.

They gave the $900 to avsi, which is an Italian aid organization in Uganda, and avsi channeled the money to the affected people in the United States.

Rose Busingye, one of the 200 women who gave money, said: “Those people who are suffering, they belong to us. … Their problems are our problems. Their children are our children.”

When you consider how little the Choctaw had when they gave to the Irish, how little the Masai had when they donated precious cows to help post-9/11 America, and how little the Ugandan women had when they donated to the victims of Katrina, it’s easier to see how noble it is to be generous and giving—especially when you have little to give.