Mission and Vision

What are Difference Diaries?

Difference Diaries are short documentary-style films. These are young adults telling it like it is about living day by day with difference. These are expressions of courage and perseverance that inspire admiration, empathy, and acceptance.

Why Difference Diaries?

  • Teenagers and Young Adults need peer understanding
  • Educators need tools to teach tolerance
  • Parents need to see other kids like theirs
  • Physicians need tools to support their patients with their individual needs
  • Students need to learn empathy and acceptance

Our Mission

It is our goal to ignite ongoing conversation that will contribute to better lives for those living with defining difference as well as friends, families, and perfect strangers who “just never thought about it.”

Difference Diaries is an initiative created to strip away judgment and develop true empathy.  The young adults who share their stories offer real insights and an opportunity for viewers to know a little more about  “what it’s like.”   These diaries stand alone and form a collection of voices to inspire conversation, de-stigmatize, and promote genuine understanding.

Our home is an interactive website, where you can view short films diaries by and about young adults with life-altering, chronic difference (some visible, some not so visible). These are young adults who are often at a critical point, emerging from the protective cocoon of childhood and entering the broader adult world of independence.

The diaries focus on conditions as diverse as the individuals living with them including: cancer, hemophilia, dwarfism, sickle-cell anemia, albinism, facial deformity, blindness, HIV, amputee, hemangioma, vitiligo, diabetes, renal disease, Crohn’s disease, cystic fibrosis, cerebral palsy, OCD and more.

What you will find at differencediaries.org

  • Diaries to be viewed individually or as a group.
  • Information and resources about each condition.
  • A comprehensive, professionally developed Teaching Guide whose purpose is to create insight, facilitate discussion, foster empathy and provide a starting point for true education about living with difference.
  • A juried Short Film Competition encouraging young adults with difference, along with friends and family to give a voice to this important subject.