Former Progressive Labour Party Senator Davida Morris is urging the people of Bermuda to change their materialistic ways, accusing them of thinking more about money than each other.Ms Morris is calling on residents to start looking at money in a different way as she believes young people are growing up “wanting materialistic success”.The youth worker, who now lives in London, said her home island was in “a dire situation” because of the gang and gun violence, which has taken the lives of 16 people in two years.And she believes the only way forward is for adults to change their ways. She declared: “If we want to change young people, we have to change ourselves.”Ms Morris was one of a handful of Bermudians selected to speak at the TEDxBermuda event at the Fairmont Southampton Resort on Saturday. She told the audience of about 200 people that babies of the 1980s and 1990s were told to “go to school, get a job and get all the material successes” such as expensive cars and flat-screen TVs.Ms Morris said: “We live in a materialistic society, Bermuda is surrounded by wealth. We hear ‘I want to take this trip’, ‘I really want that purse’ and ‘I must have those shoes’. These things have taken over and have become more important than how we relate to one another. Money is a driving force in our society but it cannot be placed over the importance of human lives and needs.”Ms Morris said many children in Bermuda were growing up in single-parent homes. She said this was a problem “when a single parent becomes a non-parent” and children were forced to raise themselves. She also highlighted how young people were a product of Bermuda’s low educational attainments. She said: “They’re not responsible for the poor education system, they are just pushed through it.”Ms Morris said children were “at the bottom of the heap” as they were continually being blamed for problems out of their control. Ms Morris also talked about her work with children who had been neglected, abused and excluded from school in London, saying: “Their issues are always symptoms of outside processes.”Ms Morris said she was “really disturbed and annoyed” at the response to the London riots as people were too quick to call those involved “hooligans and the lost generation”. She said the rioting quickly spread across England because young people “felt a disconnect with the community” and “took the opportunity to get material success”.Ms Morris said: “Young people are a product of their community. But the community is not aware of how their actions are impacting young people. Young people are who we define them to be. We don’t take the time to talk to them on their level. They don’t care because no one cares about their feelings or lifestyles.”Ms Morris wants to see people placing more emphasis on the needs of our future generations to “help change social reality and change social behaviour”.She said: “We have to invite young people into the conversation, simply dictating to them will not work. We have to respect the minds of young people, change the way we talk to them, change the way we interact with them.”Ms Morris’ parting words were to set the audience the challenge of helping to start social change. She urged people to “view young people differently” and “see young people for who they are”.Other big-idea Bermudians who shared their expertise at TEDx included builder Larry Mills, who discussed vernacular architecture and how it had evolved over 400 years.He was first on stage and gave the event a local flavour as he showed the audience photos of how traditional Bermudian cottages had changed over time.Mr Mills said “although original settlers didn’t have the expertise of architects today” they discovered the “amazing materials” of Cedar and Bermuda stone. He said: “Principles are still the same today as the 18th century … It’s important that we try to retain the expertise of those who have gone before us.“They didn’t have the benefit of computers but they had the benefit of the square. You can do every calculation you need to build a vernacular structure with a square.”Mr Mills talked in depth about “Bermuda’s beautiful roofs” and the specifics of their construction and how rainwater is captured and channelled to storage tanks. Mr Mills, a member of the Historic Buildings Advisory Committee, also explained how he had spent 30 years “collecting bits and pieces from vernacular architecture” that he had rescued from building sites.Bermudian singer-songwriter Joy T Barnum received a standing ovation after she’d provided the audience with some vocal entertainment. Ms Barnum, who has recently toured Europe with Heather Nova, said she had learned to “use her voice as an instrument” as her church “viewed instruments as a distraction”.She said Otis Reading and Tina Turner were among her favourite artists and said she used her lyrics to show people “where I come from, where I have been and where I am going”.