DIFFERbilities Experience

DIFFERbilities Experience provides friendship and inclusion building opportunities to high school and college students both with and without disabilities in a controlled environment. With a focus on each individual's differing abilities and interests in art, education, and sports, students foster communities of inclusion, acceptance and mutual respect.

DIFFERbilities Experience is founded on the belief high school and college students, with and without disabilities can, in an controlled environment, play, learn and form friendships from participating in student experiences through arts, education, and sports, that allow students to use their different abilities to their fullest potential.

DIFFERbilities Experience believes that participating in such experiences is essential to the development of inclusive and respecting attitudes, and that participating in a controlled environment with those with different abilities is the most appropriate means to gage and measure attitudes, observe friendships, and encourage personal growth.

DIFFERbilities Experience believes that through experiences through arts, education, and sports, students with and without disabilities benefit physically, mentally and socially; friendship are formed; and the community at large, both through participation and observation, is united in understanding people with disabilities in an environment of inclusion, acceptance and respect.

Danielle Liebl, Founder of DIFFERbilities Experience, is an expert in the field of working with those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Her experience with the population started at a young age. Danielle was born with cerebral palsy and was told by several doctors that she would never succeed in school or live independently. In addition, her peers relentlessly bullied her and teachers told her that she was “too dumb to understand.” But Danielle refused to live her life limited by the low expectations of experts.
Impassioned by her personal successes, Danielle decided to organize a school club, Students for the Advancement of People with DIFFERbilities (now DIFFERbilities Experience,Inc) that aims to reduce the stigmas associated with disabilities by connecting young people with and without disabilities. Today, DIFFERbilities Experience, Inc. is a 501(c)3 organization that provides friendship and inclusion building opportunities to high school and college students both with and without disabilities in a controlled environment. With a focus on each individual's differing abilities and interests in art, education, and sports, students foster communities of inclusion, acceptance and mutual respect.
Through DIFFERbilities Experience, students have helped to build friendships and develop understanding among students from different backgrounds, which Liebl says is the most important part the organization, because it has designed a powerful model of controlled exposure by partnering students with and without intellectual disabilities. As one student said: “(People with intellectual disabilities) are my friend, they have impacted my life in one war or another.”