Kahlil Darden just turned 23 in March and is already eight years into his work as the founder and CEO of Young Black Motivated Kings & Queens, or YBMKQ, the nonprofit that provides underserved youth in the Pittsburgh/Penn Hills area.

The third letter of the above acronym stands for “motivated,” and Darden, a recent graduate of Clark-Atlanta University, more than fits the bill. Gen Z is often demonized as an apathetic, unmotivated generation, but Darden is anything but. He is, in fact, also very conceptual, detail-oriented, and successful.

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He was just 15 when he founded YBMKQ. Darden said he was in his room, pondering stereotypes about teens. “I just wrote down [words for] what I wanted people to think of when they thought of us,” he says.

In January, Darden and YBMKQ just broke ground for D’Avery A. Thomas Community Center, servicing residents from the cradle to post-high school. In cooperation with Pittsburgh Public Schools, the center offers after-school programming for elementary, middle, and high school, as well as daycare and Head Start. Darden says they hope to serve at least 94 students per program, at a negligible cost for participants.

“We really mean it when we say we want it to be a one-stop shop,” promises Darden. “We want to serve all the people from very young to very old and then allow it to be a full circle moment.”

Darden grew up in Penn Hills and wanted to do something for this part of the city. “There haven’t been a lot of opportunities for our young people in Pittsburgh, and specifically in the Penn Hills area,” he says. “I was there when the YMCA was pulled out [in 2016]. For me it’s being able to create and cultivate space that used to exist for me, and for other young people.”

Tellingly, the art studio in the new center is one that Darden is most excited about. Kids can “just pack right in” and create art in the safe haven they’ve created and not leave the hood.

There will be two art studio spaces: one for making music and podcasts, and one called the Rose Room of Visual Arts.

“Antwon… was an arts creator. That’s how he conceptualized and talked about the things that he went through,” Darden says. “Even down to writing a poem that described vaguely how he would pass away.”

YMBKQ also came to be as a response to a series of deaths around him. Working with the organization was a place for Darden to give back, to process, and to heal. This is why mental health awareness and treatment remains a pillar of the org, through afterschool programming, through mental health professionals on staff, and through “healing” events throughout the year.

“Sometimes young people just need that space to say I can just be here. Or I can just be here and just draw because drawing is my coping mechanism,” Darden explains. “It was being able to create something where young people can simply just be. It may seem more complex than that, but that’s just what I wanted to be able to create.”

When Darden was 12, one of his favorite uncles – “He loved to build with people and drop gems,” – was killed by gun violence.

“The day he died, we were supposed to have a family game night,” Darden recalls. “We spent a lot of family time together. I know if he could have jumped into a line of work helping young people, he would have done this work.”

Darden was in the throes of depression and sadness—he says it was the first time he experienced deep grief—and recognized that there weren’t places where people forced you to have conversations about it. “You weren’t given space – and at that time, I didn’t really want to talk about it. I wanted to be able to do stuff that kept my mind busy,” he says.

A few years later, his best friend died. And then his 1-year-old godson, D’Avery A. Thomas, was also killed. Antwon Rose II, a young man who was killed by police in 2018, was also heavy on Darden’s heart. His outlet wasn’t traditional therapy, it was working with his community.

“It was community work, it was just being able to just keep going,” he says. “One of my cousins [and I] were debating because they’re like, you’re not grieving, you’re just keeping yourself busy. But I tell them, no, this is how I grieve. And for some people that doesn’t look normal, they feel like that’s hiding, that’s running from your emotions, but for me, helping other people, and ensuring that other people don’t feel the pain that I felt allows me to deal with what I went through.”

Darden also has a very keen sense of himself and his goals. In short, he marches to his own beat and beats his own path. He’s always eschewed traditional advice like, wait until you get a college degree to do the things you want to – like start a nonprofit for kids in Pittsburgh.

“A lot of people put restraints on young people—wait till you’re out of college, wait a couple of years—my mom told me that. But I just defied the odds. And we laugh about it now,” says Darden.

Yet it couldn’t have been easy to continue to program YBMKQ from Atlanta while being a full-time student. Yet again, Darden defied the odds.

“A lot of people said, oh when Kahlil goes to Atlanta, YBMKQ is gonna end, it won’t exist anymore. And so, for me, it was a proving point. You can be in another state and still run work. It’s possible. And people ask me how I did it, and sometimes I’ll tell them, I don’t know. But I did it. I’m showing young people that going to college don’t stop nothing, you can still work, you can still build your dream, and you don’t have to wait to get to college before you start.”

Conventional wisdom also said to leave Pittsburgh and never look back. Darden defied that, too.

“I talked a little about this at the groundbreaking – but I hate when people say stuff like, get as far away from Pittsburgh as you can. Get away and never come back. And for me, that just perpetuates the cycle of never getting better. You can leave but grow within yourself, learn things you have to learn about you, and also come back to pour back into young people that might not get to experience that.”

YMBKQ’s mentorship, educational and entrepreneurship programs encourage young people to go to college.

“If you never go and experience a world other than what you grew up in, you never learn what people are missing out on,” says Darden. “I don’t want to [bind] people here, you’re not bound to stay here, but always go and grow!”

The one thing Darden says that he would give his city’s youth unequivocally if he had a magic wand is an oldie but goodie.

“Love. I think what a lot of young people lack is love, genuine love. And people that care, [who] actually show up. Being able to show up to show them what it means to love,” he says. “And it’s loving them through their mistakes. When you’re young you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to do stuff, then wake up tomorrow and say, why did I do this? So, if the kids in Pittsburgh had just a little more love. Just a little bit. They’d be ok.”

Angela Bronner is a writer and editor living in Harlem, New York.

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