The center operates throughout the year, both as an after-school gathering spot and as a summer day camp. During the academic year, the building serves as a hangout for boys and girls from ages two to 19, equipped with VCRs, pool tables, and miniature soccer tables. An afternoon visitor finds youngsters busy painting, using the indoor basketball gym, working on homework with high school tutors or even keeping tabs on their diets. When they are not busy at work indoors, the children are most likely out on a field trip to Chuck E. Cheese, Discovery Zone, an area park, or another New Haven attraction. Rather than just provide the Hill's youngest people with a place to call home when school ends, Moore and his staff aim to endow its children with skills and goals they can carry throughout their adult lives.
Children help run the center, taking on progressively more responsibility as they get older.
Both in the after-school program and in the summer camp, youngsters aged eight to 10 train to become junior youth workers. Once they reach the age of 10, the children help care for the youngest children, answer phone calls, and assist on the center's transportation van. At 12, the youngsters become youth workers. They let us make our own decisions. Moore believes that making children responsible for the program will help make them competent adults.