The NCD Diaries is a participatory, community-based and multimedia storytelling project that highlights individual lived experiences and calls for action on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The NCD Diaries brings together recommendations for improvements to the NCD response, from the perspective of people with lived experience, and in support of the Advocacy Agenda of People Living with NCDs1. Diaries are presented in three formats: written text, audio, and visual.

The NCD Diaries are possible thanks to support from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust.

The NCD Diaries project seeks to:

• Amplify the voices and lived experiences of people living with NCDs to build narratives that put people first and build awareness of the challenges experienced by people living with NCDs.   
• Support and inspire people living with NCDs to share their experiences, and recommendations for a more effective NCD response and become advocates in their community.
• Provide a repository of documented lived experience, highlighting the day-to-day challenges and personal realities of people living with NCDs around the world through interactive media formats and applying the public narrative framework.   
• Contextualise the Global and National Advocacy Agendas of People Living with NCDs and the Global Charter on Meaningful Involvement through the lived realities, needs and contributions of people living with NCDs.

In September 2025, world leaders will gather at the UN High-Level Meeting (HLM) on NCDs where they will decide whether to place NCDs as a priority on the global health agenda. In the lead up to the HLM, NCD Alliance have launched the ‘Global Week for Action’ campaign for 2024-25 on the theme of leadership, to convene stakeholders, including civil society and people with lived experiences, to call on their leaders to step up and help deliver the change that is needed for NCD policy and advocacy. In parallel to the campaign, Series 6 of the NCD Diaries will be launched, under the theme of Leadership from the lived experience.

Leadership is not restricted only to governments and policymakers. It can also be found in civil society, communities and people living with NCDs working at the national, subnational and local level. Lived experience leadership provides first-hand perspectives from those directly impacted, often from the ground up. NCD Diaries Series 6 seeks to highlight the contributions of people who may not traditionally be recognised as leaders—individuals from all levels of society who are driving change in their communities and we want to spotlight those with lived experience who have shown leadership qualities in calling for and driving change in their context.

Please note: If you are an NCD alliance, or a member organisation, we kindly request that you assist in identifying individuals with lived experience who would suit this opportunity. Individuals may require close support from your alliance or organisation during the 3-4 month duration of the project to create their NCD Diary, whether it is due to barriers around language, resource constraints, accessibility issues or disability. We thank you in advance for your time and commitment.

Selection Criteria

Please note that submissions for NCD Diaries are particularly competitive, and we will be taking on no more than 8 NCD Diarists (3 written, 2 video, 2 audio).

Selection will be based on the following overarching criteria:

• Relevance to thematic focus of the NCD Diaries series: Applicants will be encouraged to demonstrate clear alignment of their experiences and therefore NCD Diary concept with the thematic focus of the series, Leadership from the lived experience.
• Motivation for becoming an NCD Diarist: Statements of motivation which align well with the objectives of the NCD Diaries – compelling documentation of one’s lived experience; providing recommendations/calls to action to strengthen the NCD response when it comes to Leadership and inspiring other people living with NCDs to share their stories.
• Representativeness: We would like Diarists to be as representative as possible of a broad range of factors including age, gender, NCD condition, geographic location etc.

Project commitment overview

Selected Diarists will be involved with the NCD Diaries project across a span of three to four months (April to July 2025), which will include onboarding and training; content creation and publication; and promotion efforts aligned with advocacy and communications opportunities. It is expected that your time spent on the project will total around 6-7 days, spread across the four months. This may vary depending on a Diarist’s media format.

In recognition of the co-production element of the NCD Diaries and time and effort spent on the project, NCD Alliance will provide an acknowledgement payment to Diarists, and support any out-of-pocket expenditures necessary to complete the project. NCD Alliance will be on hand to assist with any other support requested as appropriate. If a Diarist is unable to complete and review all three entries, a reconfirmation of their interest and commitment to the NCD Diaries project will be required.

If a Diarist is unresponsive to this, NCD Alliance has the right to terminate the agreement with the Diarist, and to not proceed with publication of their diary and acknowledgement payment where appropriate.