Dr. Jane Goodall, despite having worked with chimpanzees in Tanzania for much of her life, still speaks with a soft British accent.

Despite having seen youth in developing countries turn to violence in order to survive, she said she still believes they can positively impact the world.

"When I look at these young people, I think of how we've harmed the world since I was their age," she said Oct. 1 in a lecture at Berkeley's Julia Morgan Young People's Performing Arts Center. "Is it true that there's nothing we can do about it? Absolutely not."

Goodall's visit was on behalf of the International Child Resource Institute, a Berkeley-based nonprofit, as well as Roots & Shoots, which she founded in Tanzania in 1991.

Student representatives from the Oakland Zoo's branch of Roots & Shoots as well as HOMEY, a San Francisco-based group aimed at preventing gang violence among kids, met Goodall to discuss what they could do to benefit the environment.

Jennifer Ginsburg, a senior at Miramonte High School, said Roots & Shoots allows kids to express themselves in a constructive way.

"What we do at the zoo is let children be children, let them ask questions, get dirty," she said.

Goodall compares these active youth members to "a little acorn that's going to grow into one of California's oaks."

"The life force in that seed is such that those little roots ... can work through boulders and eventually push them aside," she said.

But Goodall said a "loss of wisdom" compromises the future of youth worldwide.

"So here we are, with this extraordinary intellect, and yet we are destroying our only home," she said. "It's almost as though there has been a disconnect between this incredibly clever brain and ... the human heart."