TEDxValletta - Rebecca Sweetman - What Can I Do? December 22, 2011

Favorite:

When Rebecca asked a North American high school of students, "How many people here feel the world is a messed up place?", almost every single student raised their hand. Then she asked, "How many people here feel they can do something about it?". Only four hands were reluctantly raised, out of 300, and two of them were those of teachers. So how can we "be the change" we want to see in the world, if we're afraid to even start thinking about the changes that are needed and how we could possibly contribute to those changes? In this talk, Rebecca offers a different way of looking at the world's toughest issues: a way where we can turn fear, overwhelm, and distance into empowerment, engagement, and connection. This is the paradigm shift we need: knowing that we can change the world without having to do anything extra, but rather, be the shift.

ABOUT REBECCA
Rebecca Sweetman is the Founding Director of The Paradigm Shift Project, a registered Canadian charity that creates educational documentary resources to change worldviews. With a background in grassroots movements for social and environmental justice, Rebecca uses a lens of solidarity in her filmmaking to build trust, connection, and engagement across socioeconomic and geopolitical boundaries. Her projects are diverse and benefit communities across the globe working for a better and more sustainable future. From human rights violations in Indonesia's palm oil plantations, to food insecurity in Peru's slums, to street and refugee children in Malaysia, to access to water and sexual slavery in India, Rebecca documents the amazing solutions happening on the world's toughest issues, to show that each one of us can, and should, get involved.

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