SOCIAL WELFARE
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so as to be equipped again for employment. The United States Government has made a generous World Refugee Year gift of US$90,000 for the building of this Centre. At its North Point Camp, the Department provides vocational training and sheltered employment for some 120 homeless and disabled adults including 22 cured leprosy patients discharged from the Hay Ling Chau Leprosarium.
It has been estimated that the blind persons in Hong Kong might number about 5,000; 1,600 are registered with the Blind Welfare Unit of the Department which also runs five clubs for the blind where simple braille and handicrafts are taught. The Hong Kong Junior Chamber of Commerce again presented coloured walking sticks in 1959 for the use of the blind. Miss T. Williams, who was seconded from the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind following the visit to the Colony last year of the Director, Mr. John F. Wilson, O.B.E., arrived in April 1959 as Executive Officer of the Hong Kong Society for the Blind and adviser to the Director of Social Welfare. The local Society's Second Vocational Training Centre is being operated with some assistance from the staff of the Department and a grant from the Kowloon Rotary Club for equipment. 61 blind people are now being trained in brush-making, mat-making, rattan-weaving and machine-sewing in the two centres. The Society plans to set up a sheltered workshop to absorb some of these trainees and to cater eventually for 200 blind. The foundation stone of the new building of the Ebenezer Home and School for the Blind which will take in considerably more than its present number of 100 pupils was laid in September. The Canossa Home for the Blind which has some fifty residents also intends to expand its work. The Music Training Centre for the Blind, which opened in September 1957, now has sixteen pupils.
A sub-committee on the Welfare of the Deaf, appointed by the Social Welfare Advisory Committee at the end of 1957 to study existing services for the medical care, education and welfare of the deaf, completed its report in April 1959 and its recommendations are being considered. The Hong Kong School for the Deaf, which uses the oral method of instruction, had over a hundred boarders at the end of 1959; the Chinese Overseas School for the Deaf and Dumb, together with its branch school in Kowloon, caters for