"It's as they say, 'If you can't bring Moses to the mountain, bring the mountain to Moses,'" he says.

Correia: A Future Filmmaker

Marlon Correia, 16, is a junior at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School who started visiting the center because he knew Barbosa.

"I hang out here a lot," Correia says. "There's many problems out there so I'm usually here to stay out of trouble, like [having] someone pick a fight with you."

Sitting in the back of the youth center's kitchen, munching on chips and drinking soda to the music of "Pocahontas" playing on the TV in the front, Correia talks about working on his latest project at the center.

Barbosa picked Correia and three others to produce an anti-drug education video. Correia says he has been taking classes at the center on how to use the equipment.

"I took some classes in my freshman year at Rindge and Latin High School," says Correia. "But I forgot everything because they didn't let us use the equipment. Here they do."

Correia speaks excitedly about including footage of different scenes around the neighborhood and interviewing Rindge and Latin basketball players, too. At the suggestion to include some background music, Correia nods but adds, "I have to check with the other people I am working with; I can't just go ahead and add the music."

Correia is thinking about attending college after his senior year of high school. His choice, he says, is the result of exposure to the college counseling resources available at the youth center.

"I can always ask for help here," he says.

The Margaret Fuller House

On the corner of School and Cherry Streets, just a short walk from the Central Square subway station, sits the 95 year-old Margaret Fuller House.

Frances J. Smith Pierce, a member of the house's board of directors, proudly recalls that the neighborhood's rich history is reflected in the community center, where Malcolm X and Martin Luther King once visited and spoke.

Before becoming the community youth center, the house was the headquarters for a chapter of the Black Panther Party, according to Iona S. Nze, executive director of a neighborhood housing corporation.

Posters of African-American luminaries like artist Paul Robeson and cancer researcher Shirley Ann Jackson now grace the building's walls to inspire youths.