Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1958-1959 — Page 13

there are still a very large number in spite of the very extensive school building programme which has been carried out since the war.

27. The Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association does excellent work in running 103 boys' and girls' clubs and assisting various voluntary agencies to do similar work. There are now a total of 182 junior clubs, for children between the ages of 8 to 15, with a membership of 8,663, including the twenty two junior clubs run by the Department. Many of the children in these clubs come from the poorest families and may have to shoulder household duties or to help support themselves and their families by casual work such as shoe-shining or hawking. Details are at Appendix 9.

28. A recent important extension of the work of the Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association has been the running of libraries and reading rooms in resettlement estates and in public playgrounds and parks where pavilions for this purpose are being built by the Urban Services Department. In the small library and reading room in the Shek Kip Mei Resettlement Estate, occupying a floor area of only 480 sq. ft., an average of 350 children attend each day. Two children's libraries are also run by the Children's Playground Association at the War Memorial Centre at the Southorn Playground in Hong Kong and at the Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre in Kowloon. The average combined daily attendance last year was about 650.

29. By the end of the year there was a total of sixteen children's libraries, the books in many of which had been provided by the Hong Kong Junior Chamber of Commerce, which also presented to the Department a mobile van to serve children in the New Territories.

30. The Children's Playground Association continued to provide playground facilities for games such as basketball and miniature foot- ball in their four playgrounds and two stadia, all of which were used to the full by children and young persons of all ages. At the Y.M.C.A.'s Recreation Centre, instruction was given in swimming, water-polo and life-saving to very large numbers of children and young persons.

31. During the year the total enrolment in the Boy Scouts' Association increased by about 1,000 and now stands at 5,724. With the help of these new recruits and the assistance of the Handicapped Scout Committee it has been possible to form two new groups for deaf Scouts, and three groups for the blind. Fifty one courses were held during the year and 1,271 Scouts given some form of training in leadership.

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