to minds and bodies can hardly be exaggerated; the pressures and pace of industrial city life undermine the defences of high-spirited youngsters who lack established moral instruction, but youth groups can do much positive and preventive work with junior citizens. Until 1965 the co-ordination and promotion of all youth welfare activities had for several years been the function of the Hong Kong Conference of Youth Organizations, a consultative body made up of twenty-two voluntary youth agencies and three government departments (Education, Prisons and Social Welfare), which also ran a youth camp itself. In 1965 the conference voted its own dissolutation and absorption into a new Youth and Children's Division of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service, and handed its youth camp over to the Children's Playground Associa- tion. The Youth and Children's Division of the Hong Kong Council of Social Service is organizing a Youth Festival to be held in November 1967, the object of which is to make known through a variety of activities and exhibitions to be held in Hong Kong and Kowloon the scope and variety of work with young people undertaken in Hong Kong and the variety of opportunities offered to children and young people to spend their leisure in a constructive and enjoyable way. In association with this Festival the Division is organizing a seminar which will provide opportunities for participants from the Asian region to exchange views and to discuss problems of common concern. The Division nominated two participants from its member organizations to participate in the 5th Asian Conference on Youth Hostels to be held in Tokyo in April 1967.
21. The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme is now familiar to young people of Hong Kong of all descriptions. Its value lies in its challenge to their willingness to devote their own time to discovering the practical bounds of their own initiative, fitness and skill as indi- viduals. These bounds are much wider than many originally thought. About one thousand boys have already taken part in the scheme, from fifty different schools or groups based informally on an existing institu- tion or class. The Boys and Girls Operating Committees are attempt- ing to attract young workers and others from a still wider field; the Girls Scheme is now open to all the girls in the Colony and over five hundred and sixty have already taken part. Various adult bodies are being pressed to take an interest in the scheme in order that some of their members might become leaders or instructors for the participating boys and girls. A very different project, though confused with the Award Scheme in some minds, is the proposal of a group of private citizens to form an Outward Bound School in Hong Kong. This
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