At the Unstoppable Foundation, we know education alone can’t break the cycle of poverty. Children can’t learn if they’re hungry, sick, or without clean water. That’s why we’ve built our work on 5 Pillars – because just like the pillars of a strong building, these pillars provide the essential foundation and support needed for children and communities to thrive.
Our holistic 5-Pillar Model combines education, clean water and sanitation, food and nutrition, healthcare, and income generation training to address the root causes of poverty from every angle. Each pillar reinforces the others, creating a stable, sustainable structure that lifts entire communities.
When all 5 pillars are implemented within 3-5 years, communities are empowered to become fully self-reliant – no longer dependent on outside support to sustain essential resources or keep their children in school.
This foundation ensures every child receives a quality education and empowers families to thrive, so they can achieve their full potential and break the cycle of poverty for good.
This isn’t charity – it’s empowerment.
Education has been proven to be the best way to empower people with the tools, knowledge, strength and confidence they need to promote and protect their own rights, growth and self-sufficiency. Education helps families, communities and entire nations break the cycle of poverty.
With primary education, we are empowering children to not only learn reading, writing and arithmetic, but to learn to protect themselves from HIV and AIDS, and from malaria, tuberculosis and cholera through basic sanitation principles as simple as washing their hands.
Educated children are better equipped to build strong livelihoods through improved employment opportunities.
School-Building provides a clean, safe physical structure for children to learn and includes:
Educational Programming provides all the necessary tools and resources for effective learning including:
In Africa alone, people spend 40 billion hours every year just hauling water. Women and children, particularly girls, bear the burden of collecting water, walking miles to the nearest source, which is unclean and likely to make them sick.
Providing clean water in a community is fundamental to children attending school. It not only ensures they are healthy enough to attend school but frees them from the time-consuming task of hauling water so they have time to attend school.
The water and sanitation program varies from community-to-community and includes, but is not limited to:
Close to half a million children under the age of 5, as well as pregnant and lactating mothers, are currently affected by acute malnutrition throughout Kenya.
Persistent droughts threaten the livelihoods of families, lead to poor nutrition among both children and adults, and subsequently reduces regular school attendance.
Students are often forced to drop out of school and find temporary employment to earn money and help feed their families.
A full belly helps students focus, stay alert, and engage in learning. The promise of a daily meal also motivates children to stay in school all day and dedicate more time to their studies.
To further support nutrition, school gardens and farming projects provide fresh, healthy foods to supplement the lunch program. Each school manages its own garden plot, where students learn hands-on agricultural practices, small-scale irrigation, crop production, and the importance of a diverse, nutritious diet. These lessons not only nourish students at school but encourage them to apply their knowledge to gardens at home, fostering food security and healthier families.
Healthcare is a significant concern for the communities we support. With no healthcare and no health education, diseases like HIV/AIDS, malaria, typhoid, dysentery and a myriad of other waterborne diseases continue to run rampant across the developing world — devastating families, and keeping children from getting an education that can reverse this perpetual crisis.
This pillar acknowledges the strong link between helping people meet their basic healthcare needs and building strong communities.
The activities that take place in this pillar vary depending on the capacity of the community and how much exposure the adults have had to income-generating training. Activities include:
