The diary of Anne Frank, claimed to be the most widely read piece of non-fiction apart from the Bible, still resonates in the 21st century. In a corner of west London, a charity, the Anne Frank Trust, is using the powerful story of the Jewish teenager's years in hiding in a warehouse attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to open the minds of young people to many of the issues around personal responsibility and prejudice that they face today.

For Deirdre Higgins, pastoral manager at the study centre in Ealing, a pupil-referral unit for up to 80 children aged between 11 and 16, the diary provides a new dimension to her work on emotional literacy. "I had done some work on Anne Frank before, in high school, when I was head of history – so I knew its value in a historical context," she says. "But the diary has many levels, and it tied in with what we were doing in PSHE and active citizenship, and it has also been used to look at the issue of bullying."

The young people at the study centre, who are on the edges of mainstream education, also have a natural empathy with Anne Frank, says Higgins. "It's about the whole nature of them being here, about their feelings of not being included. It means they have been able to question that as well as other issues around cultural diversity and the right to choose, as well as human rights."

The trust, set up to keep the legacy of the 15-year-old teenager alive, has so far worked with 30,000 pupils, mostly in deprived London boroughs, in the last two years but is now taking its Positive Voices … Positive Attitudes project to other parts of the UK. This year it begins working with schools in Glasgow and Edinburgh as well as Durham and the north-east.

The project manager, Jamie Arden, says: "At the beginning, we work with the local authority to identify what is going on locally, to help identify specific schools which are in need to the project team where there is conflict, that could be division in terms of race or schools where there is a high rate of bullying. We could also work with a school where may be there is tension in the community outside the school and the project can be used by the school as a way of bringing these communities together."

The charity uses an exhibition, mostly archived pictures of Anne Frank and her family and photographs that reflect the social history of the times, such as of Nazi rallies, as the starting point for its work. It also trains some of the pupils as guides, who go on to tell the Anne Frank story in their own words to their classmates as they tour the exhibition.

The project facilitator, Mark McEvoy, says: "The exhibition then becomes more about their space – it's not just about us coming in and doing our thing. We deliver the exhibition through photographs. We then use the story as a backdrop to talk about the Holocaust and racism. We then relate it to their lives, with discussions around human rights, racial prejudice, knife-crime and gangs. It's always about bringing the story into the context of their lives."

The exhibition remains in the school for two weeks while project workers run a series of workshops around creative writing, art and drama as well as others that look at bullying and human rights, personal responsibility, and the right to choose. The potential of the trust's work to enrich the secondary school curriculum is acknowledged by Ali Longston, community cohesion and citizenship consultant at Ealing borough council. "It links in with many areas of work – conflict resolution, racism and being a citizen," she says. "It fits very well with the current curriculum."

This year the story of Anne Frank is being brought to television viewers in a BBC1 week-long drama, The Diary of Anne Frank, which begins today. It will be shown in five 30-minute episodes on weekday evenings before EastEnders, and the BBC hopes the series will help bring the diary to a new generation.

The trust has assisted the BBC on the adaptation, and has dedicated resources on its website to coincide with the screening. The trust's executive director, and one of its founders, Gillian Walnes, says: "The series will especially appeal to schools, because there are five half-hour programmes which fit comfortably with the length of classroom lessons."

The trust's project for schools has evolved from its core work, which is devoted to a mobile exhibition about Anne Frank. It has been touring the UK since 1988, when the trust was set up with the blessing of Otto Frank, who wanted to see an educational trust established in the UK to build on the legacy of his daughter. So far the exhibition has been seen by 3 million people.

The trust has also been working in young offender institutions and prisons. For Walnes, the appeal of Anne Frank is far-reaching because her diary makes people think about the big questions – such as our shared responsibility for humanity – but also because it speaks about that time in life between being a child and an adult. "The diary is like a life speeded up; it's everybody's growing up, but Anne also represents the face of the persecuted," she says.