Our Mission:
Empowering today’s youth to overcome adversity, build strong character through compassion and forgiveness, and create resilient communities.
At the Louis Zamperini Foundation, we inspire young people to face challenges with determination, embrace forgiveness, and cultivate empathy.
Through our programs, including the Unbroken Curriculum, students learn to navigate adversity, practice respectful dialogue, reduce bullying, and build stronger, more compassionate relationships. Grounded in the values of faith, we encourage youth to live with purpose and integrity and to positively impact their communities.
Watch the five-minute overview.
Free Curriculum for Educators
All we ask is that after using the curriculum, you complete a brief survey. Your feedback helps us demonstrate measurable impact and keep this resource available to classrooms nationwide.
Across all 50 states, educators are using Louis Zamperini’s story to help students wrestle with resilience, forgiveness, courage, and purpose. What begins as history quickly becomes personal. Students engage in meaningful conversations about adversity, empathy, and the choices that shape who they become.
Join the growing community of teachers bringing character-driven dialogue into their classrooms at a time when students need it most.
A Legacy That Still Changes Lives
For over 70 years, Louis Zamperini’s life has offered young people a powerful example of resilience, redemption, and hope.
Students quickly connect Louie’s journey to their own.
One 15 year old student wrote:
“Dear Louie, your story means everything to kids like me who feel stranded. It shows that no matter what we are facing, we can push through and find reasons to keep going. Even on our darkest days, there is hope.”
No Student Left Out of the Conversation
The Unbroken Curriculum is built around a structured Round Table discussion model designed to engage every student.
Teachers are able to visually track participation, recognize quieter students, and create intentional space for thoughtful dialogue.
The goal is not simply to tell a story, but to invite students into meaningful reflection. In classrooms using this model, students learn to listen respectfully, speak honestly, and consider perspectives beyond their own.
Every student has a voice. Every voice matters.
Visual Round Table model, ensuring every student participates in meaningful dialogue.
Sunburst Youth Academy, part of the National Guard Youth Challenge Program. Encouraging discipline, resilience, and renewed direction.
Reaching Students in Every Setting
Louis’ story continues to resonate in classrooms and youth programs across the country.
The Unbroken Curriculum is being used in public and private schools, Title 1 campuses, residential youth programs, and youth correctional facilities.
Students engage in meaningful conversations about adversity, forgiveness, empathy, and purpose. They begin to see their own lives differently and recognize their capacity for resilience.
Hope in Hard Places
Louie’s story is often shared in environments where young people are facing significant consequences and difficult circumstances.
In youth correctional facilities and structured programs, students listen with a different kind of attentiveness. The themes of accountability, perseverance, forgiveness, and personal responsibility are not theoretical. They are immediate and deeply relevant.
Again and again, we see students recognize that their past does not have to determine their future.
Ventura County Youth Correctional Facility. A message of resilience and redemption for young men seeking a renewed direction forward.
Help Keep the Curriculum Free
Because of generous partners, the Unbroken Curriculum is available to educators at no cost.
Your support allows students across the country to encounter a story that builds courage, resilience, and hope at a time when they need it most.
When you give, you are not funding a program.
You are placing a living example of perseverance and forgiveness into classrooms and youth facilities nationwide.
Together, we can ensure that the next generation has access to a story strong enough to shape their future.
From Victory Boys Camps to Today
Long before the curriculum reached classrooms nationwide, Louie invested personally in young people through Victory Boys Camps.
Today, that same mission continues through The Louis Zamperini Foundation, equipping educators, supporting schools, and inspiring students across the country.
The settings may look different, but the purpose remains the same. Louie’s extraordinary journey gives young people something rare in their generation. A real life example of courage under pressure, perseverance through suffering, and forgiveness that defies explanation.
Again and again, students walk away with the same conviction. If Louie could endure what he endured, then I can face what lies in front of me.
Victory Boys Camps, 1955. Louis investing personally in young lives.