Many people believe that there is one pathway to success: graduate from high school, attend college and then either begin a full-time job or continue studying for a higher degree. In American society today, this is usually viewed as a recipe for success, and it isn’t a bad path to follow, but it also isn’t the only path to follow. Nate Myers took a different route; one that led him through scholarships, internships, study abroad, dropping out, odd jobs and finally a startup called the Malkuta Project that reaches youth throughout Raleigh and provides them with unique, creative and professional opportunities.

Nate Myers began attending NC State in 2007 as a Park Scholar and a Caldwell Fellow. He planned on majoring in mechanical engineering and was able to maintain a 4.0 GPA throughout his freshman and sophomore years. He also interned at NASA the summer following his freshman year and, as impressive as that sounds, that was when he began realizing that he wasn’t particularly passionate about engineering.

“Obviously as an intern you’re not going to be doing the most important jobs, but I had a hard time reconciling the money that was being poured into NASA,” Myers said. “It’s important, we need that work, but it was hard for me to reconcile when we have so many problems on Earth. I started questioning if the work I did was really impacting people.”

Despite his realization, Myers returned to college in the fall and continued studying mechanical engineering. The following spring, he studied abroad for the first time in Ghana and he went abroad again the following spring to Australia. His experiences overseas inspired him and introduced him to his true passion: social entrepreneurship.

Though he had found life working with aboriginal communities in Australia, he struggled with the decision of pursuing his passion or finishing his degree in mechanical engineering, which would lead to success but stoked none of his passion.

In the summer of 2011, with only one or two semesters of college left to finish his degree, Myers decided to drop out of college and pursue his passion.

The last class he took at NC State was Mindy Sopher’s COM 466 class, which had a service-learning component to it and paired all of the students with a local non-profit to intern. Sopher paired Myers with the Boys and Girls Club, where he discovered his creative and entrepreneurial passions while organizing a flash mob for the youth there. Interning with the Boys and Girls Club encouraged Myers to break from the conventional path to success.

“He was always thinking and processing,” Sopher said. “The poster child for Think and Do.”

After solidifying his decision to leave school, Myers slept on his friend’s couch and worked a variety of jobs to pay the bills.

“It’s expensive being broke,” Myers joked.

He worked as a TA with middle school-aged autistic kids, he was a waiter at Waffle House, he played in a funk band and a reggae band, and he continued volunteering with the Boys and Girls Club. They eventually hired him, and he began growing a music production program there.

It all began when Myers played piano for the teenagers and saw the power that music had on them. Most of the children came from low-income households and they found the ability to express their own social problems and challenges through music, going so far as to transform the shower in the club’s bathroom into a studio.

“We would just jam out,” Myers said.

He noticed that art was an outlet for the youth he worked with, and he began to imagine a formal program that could connect youth with their creative talents and then teach them how to use that talent to tell stories and have an impact on the world.

“Nate always had a spark and a zest,” Sopher said.

That early spark felt when working with the Boys and Girls club led to the creation of the Malkuta Project. In the fall of 2015, when Myers heavily began organizing the Malkuta Project, he decided to return to school and finish pursuing his degree.

Myers didn’t want to return to mechanical engineering, but he also wanted to find a major that many of his prior credits could transfer to. Sopher introduced him to a science, technology and society major. It was an interdisciplinary major that he could finish in three semesters while also picking up an arts entrepreneurship minor. He is on track to graduate in December 2016, and then he will be able to fully devote his time to the development and implementation of the Malkuta Project.

The word “malkuta” has Aramaic origins and Myers explained that there are two meanings behind the word.

“The first is ‘empowerment from within,’” Myers said. “The second is kingdom.”

While the first is self-explanatory, Myers expounded on the second definition and clarified the importance of that meaning.

 “We all have a creative spark or potential within us,” Myers said. “It’s how we use those gifts to bring about a kingdom reality, which is how the world ought to be.”

Myers is a firm believer in the power of music and creativity as an outlet to tell stories and change the world for the better. On his Kickstarter webpage, Myers described the Malkuta Project as a “multimedia arts program empowering and linking low income teens with creative professionals to produce socially conscious, driven content.” The project strives to teach teens multimedia skills that will help them be successful both in the workplace and in telling stories of empowerment.

Though the project was only formally introduced in May 2016, Myers has already raised money and made connections all across Raleigh. In the summer of 2016, Myers entered the e Games at NC State, a pitch competition that he referred to as “NC State’s version of Shark Tank.”

Myers won first place in the arts feasibility category and also won first place in audience choice. At the end of the day, he had raised $5,000 for the Malkuta Project and invested that money into equipment so the teens could take on larger, more detailed projects.

The Malkuta Project, still in early stages, works with five to 10 teens now. The teens go through a structured workshop and then the project helps them transition to internships or work through different companies.

Myers hopes to continue growing the project and, one day, implement it in cities outside of Raleigh-Durham as well. After a long, unconventional struggle reconciling his work with his passions, Myers finally created a project that provides outreach into the community and also utilizes his creative, entrepreneurial and technical skills.

“We’re millennials, we want meaning in life,” Myers said.

He hopes that the Malkuta Project will inspire teens to find their creative talents and use them to tell empowering stories that inspire others as well.

A version of this article appeared in print on Oct. 10, 2016, on page 11 with the headline: The Malkuta Project, empowering youths to creativity.