“A lot of people wouldn't take the time of the day to do what they did,” Jenae Hall, 18, says of Chris Landrum and Nicholas Mitchel, the duo who helped her and her classmates open a burger shop. “Most of the time, [adults] try to make us do it on our own without a lot of guidance. A lot of us need guidance.”

To volunteer with the students at Mergenthaler Vocational-Technical High School in Baltimore, Landrum and Mitchel, of local organization Noisy Tenants, first had to gain their trust. The students were used to adults coming into their classrooms and making promises they were unable to keep. Students had gotten their hopes up about new computers, textbooks, and other school materials several times before Landrum and Mitchel arrived with the idea of helping them conceive and run their own pop-up restaurant. The teens weren’t used to feeling like their ideas and passions were taken seriously.

The students eventually opened and ran the restaurant, Noisy Burger, in 2017, managing a rush of hungry locals who visited the pop-up space. Executing the business plan was about more than serving burgers: It was a chance for students to utilize the skills that they already possessed in new and unexpected ways, and a reminder that there are people in their community who believe in them.

Baltimore teenagers and adults alike have long resented the public narrative that surrounds their city. They want outsiders to know that amid the city’s violence and poverty, there’s also a vibrant arts scene and a community determined to look out for one another, even when it feels like the rest of the world has already counted Baltimore out.

Over a three-day weekend, from August 17-19, the Red Bull Amaphiko festival facilitated events that developed and highlighted social entrepreneurship occurring throughout the city. From a concept for a trans-friendly sliding-scale home-sharing program to a yoga initiative that focuses on bringing wellness initiatives directly to black men and boys, the festival highlighted the efforts of local entrepreneurs who are working to improve their city.

During the festival, entrepreneurs seemed to be in agreement about two things: Baltimore residents are the most equipped to solve the issues their community faces, and youth have to be at the forefront of doing so.

Inside Arena Players, the country’s oldest African-American, continuously operating community theater, three black teenage girls — leaders in Baltimore’s youth arts scene — silenced a diverse crowd, comprised mostly of adults, with poetry about the black experience: “This is what happens when the youth fights back.”

During their performance at the the Medicine Show, a part of the entrepreneurship festival, the Dewmore Baltimore Youth Poetry Team criticize a system that allows “gavels to sing out acquittals rather than accountability,” sarcastically reflect on the privilege that comes with “white-boy magic,” and exhibit a confidence in their identities in a way that most people struggle to do in their teenage years.

Keyma Flight, 17, and her teammates, including 19-year-old Kraileani Lea-Conner, 17-year-old Maren Lovey Wright-Kerr, and 18-year-old Deleicea Greene, didn’t participate in the riots that followed the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, but the teens say the way the youth in their city was portrayed motivated them to riot in their own way: through their poetry. The teens have won poetry slams nationally and internationally, conveying their perspectives with impassioned expletives, and showing up to competitions and events unapologetic about their identities.

“You just can’t look at [what’s happening] and continue to ignore it,” Flight said. “We are the manifestation of what happens when you can’t take it anymore.”