Kong Council of Practical Training Centres at the Wong Tai Sin Centre; these courses lead to ready employment, and at any one time three hundred boys aged 15 or over are being trained. At Tsuen Wan, the Lutheran World Service provides similar facilities in carpentry, mechanics, tailoring and typing for one hundred young people of 16 years or over. The Hong Kong Family Welfare Society provides casework services at community centres and at the two social centres mentioned below. The department is responsible for the general management of the centres, each of which has a library of twenty-five thousand volumes, nearly all Chinese, as well as periodicals and news- papers. This amenity is highly valued by children and adults alike, attracting up to a thousand users a day and serving people who cannot, or do not, use the Urban Council's public library services. The depart- ment has given encouragement to a great variety of men's and women's clubs, youths' and children's clubs, interest groups and other activities in such forms as Chinese music circles, photographic clubs, competi- tions, exhibitions, concerts, Chinese operas, film shows, Chinese boxing, judo, sports, painting and calligraphy groups and many more; the general object is to help those who take part to associate and to develop a group spirit and still more important—of community development through a willingness to accept responsibility for others. Success is being achieved in encouraging in perhaps still fairly rudimentary ways: in the play centres mothers take turns in looking after the children; adults' clubs continue the tradition of entertaining old people and raising funds to help victims of disasters; youth groups contribute a stout effort in helping still younger age groups, or in taking entertainment to old people, as well as in promoting community projects like summer clubs, cleanliness campaigns, and the like; and last winter some one hundred and twenty-seven groups of all ages and interests cooperated on a regional basis through community and social centres to cut down both fire risk and accidents caused by the negligent discharge of fire crackers over Chinese New Year. In most established groups, the members elect their own committees, decide on the programme and organize it them- selves, and the community worker abides by his directive to stand in the background, with the aim of leaving them on their own and turning his attention to another less advanced cluster of people who will need assistance and guidance.
16. The department runs a social centre at Sheung Shui in the New Territories in which the Family Welfare Society has an office and the Hong Kong Society for the Blind runs a small sheltered workshop for
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