The touching clip was created to inspire people to volunteer at their local shelters

The difference between a person who is homeless and one who is not is only skin-deep.

That’s the message that Tyler Bridges hoped to convey when he came up with the concept for a moving YouTube video that shows homeless men getting transformative haircuts.

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“We tend to look at someone suffering from homelessness and see him as a monster or someone you can’t relate to at all,” Bridges tells PEOPLE. “But if you give him a shower and a shave and a fresh cut, he looks just like you or me. There isn’t that big difference.”

Bridges wanted to bring this concept to life in a short film.

The video, titled “What’s The Difference,” says there are more than 600,000 people in the United States who are experiencing homelessness. Shot in black-and-white, the 76-second clip shows men from the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles getting shaves and trims.

“What’s the difference between you and them?” it asks. “We are all the same. Don’t let difference define us.”

Bridges says one of the homeless men in the video was brought to tears after seeing his new look.

“For him to see himself in the mirror, it was like he hadn’t seen himself in a long, long, long time,” says Bridges. “It was almost like he remembered who he really was before whatever happened that got him to where he was that day.”

Despite their rough pasts, many of the video subjects left the shoot with a sense of hope.

“Most of the reactions were, ‘I’m looking good, I’m feeling good. Things are tough, but this is a silver lining,’ ” says Bridges. “Guys got their swagger back a little bit.”

The inspirational video encourages people to visit the Association of Gospel Rescue Missions website to find local shelters at which they can volunteer.