Old people also want to change the world

The achievements of a documentary filmmaker who interviewed them

We always associate with young people the will to change the world. Nothing is more normal at the beginning of one's life than to see the state of things and desire transformations. Yet the idea that old people have no desire for what surrounds them to improve could not be more wrong.

Journalist and documentary filmmaker Julia Mourri explains in a TED talk how the old people she has met internationally and in France can, instead, help the young.

She witnessed her grandmothers in Senegal who experienced forced marriages that kept them out of school. So they decided that their granddaughters and great-granddaughters would not experience the same fate. So they are not afraid to confront family members who want to forcibly marry off a teenage girl.

In the Netherlands, senior citizens offer their services to make it easier for children with an immigrant background to find work. A far more effective activity than the Dutch equivalent of the Job Centre.

Not all senior citizens are volunteers at heart, but we would be wrong to think that none of them are trying or working to make the world a better place.

Time: 12min53