26. The Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association continued its valuable work in providing recreation, informal education and character-training for several thousands of children between the ages of 8 and 14. At the end of the year the Association had six thousand four hundred members in a hundred and thirty-two clubs run directly, and there were a further seven thousand five hundred in seventy-four affiliated clubs.
27. The Lions-YMCA Camp at Junk Bay gave a weekly summer holiday to nearly three thousand children. The Hong Kong Conference of Youth Organizations' Camp at Silver Mine Bay was used by two thousand five hundred. For three months the camp underwent major alterations to allow mixed camping, and there are now plans to provide a second camp on Lantau Island.
28. The activity which is probably more popular than any other with Hong Kong children is reading. The Hong Kong Junior Chamber of Commerce has equipped its twenty-fourth children's library in the youth centre of the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups at Lo Fu Ngam Resettlement Estate. During the year the two libraries of the Children's Playground Association attracted nearly 140,000 visits and twenty thousand books were borrowed. The Boys' and Girls' Club Association's eleven children's libraries have a monthly attendance of about ninety thousand. The six libraries run by the Department in its community and social centres attract five thousand readers a day and nearly thirty thousand books are borrowed every month. The mobile library circulates the same number of books to New Territories children each month; it visits thirty- four places a week and also lends books in bulk to thirteen schools. Libraries not only provide healthy reading matter in large quantities to offset the dubious wares or downright trash offered by street stalls; they also attract children to join in competitions, picnics and other recreation organized by the agencies which run them.
29. The Hong Kong Sea School trains boys, mainly chosen because of their needy circumstances, for a career at sea. Boys who have finished their training have at present no difficulty in finding employment, as the demand from shipping firms for properly trained young seamen remains high; twenty former pupils are now serving as fully certificated ships' officers. There were 450 boys in residence at the school at the end of the year, the maximum capacity being 550. In February His Majesty King Baudouin of the Belgians opened the new administration block of the Sea School, which is a gift from the Belgian Government.
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