blind people. Sheung Shui now has a library of twenty thousand books and staff and limited facilities for its own group activities. In the old area of Sai Ying Pun on Hong Kong Island, the Tsan Yuk Social Centre provides, as best it can in an old and unsuitable building, a desperately needed outlet for the overflowing population of the crowded slums. Amenities comparable with those in the bigger centres are provided here too, for although the need for community development is most noticeable in the resettlement estates it is not an unnecessary luxury in the back alleys. Priorities will always be arguable in this field of effort, but people are as numerous in the older districts as elsewhere, and initiative and leadership as essential for leisure among any dis- tricts where it is a novelty.
17. Community development in urban areas is a comparatively new field of social work, no less in Hong Kong than elsewhere, although community organization is recognized in the profession as one of the three main social work methods. It is a responsibility which touches the activities of many departments of Government and the importance of this responsibility in a territory such as Hong Kong cannot well be overstressed. It is underlined both by the Report of the Commission which inquired into the Kowloon Disturbance of 1966 and is relevant to any proposals for the greater participation of ordinary people in the determination of local affairs. The aims and duties of the Social Welfare Department are an essential complement to those quasi-political functions of the administration carried out by the New Territories Administration and the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs. A community or social centre provides one focus for this work, but is not an end in itself. The foundations laid in the past are supporting progress. Social workers in the department are encouraged to use each centre as a base from which the resident neighbours may be visited and interested in taking some part in a social activity. This is the network through which this department, stage by stage, helps residents to become citizens, to develop co-operative attitudes, to increase their capacity to work together and, by furthering their own particular interests, to serve the wider interests of the community. We are not however the only workers in this particular vineyard, although we are among the few who use the term of 'community development'. There is scope for the development of overall co-ordination in this field if people are to be given the chance of working for the betterment of society through local participation and decision.
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