Social_Welfare_Annual_Report_1965-1966 — Page 25

Youth Training Camp at Tai Mong Tsai in January 1966. Several other camps are under planning by the Chinese YMCA, the YWCA, the Methodists and the Baptists. The Lions-YMCA Camp at Junk Bay gave a week-long 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.

23 The activity which is probably more popular than any other with Hong Kong children is reading. During the year the two libraries of the Children's Playground Association attracted nearly a hundred and thirty thousand visitors and well over twenty-two thousand books were borrowed. The Boys' and Girls' Clubs Association's thirteen children's libraries have a monthly attendance of about a hundred and twenty thousand. The six libraries run by the department itself in its com- munity and social centres attract five thousand readers a day and about thirty thousand books are borrowed every month. The mobile library which was a donation from UNICEF and the Hong Kong Junior Chamber of Commerce makes an average tour of about thirty-five miles a day, visits thirty-six separate areas every week and reaches out to children from sixty schools in the New Territories. Libraries not only provide enjoyable reading matter in large quantities to offset the taste- less illiteracy or pornography offered by street stalls; they also attract children to join in competitions, picnics and other forms of recreation organized by the agencies which run them.

24 After a successful experiment of employing recreation leaders to introduce some form of organized recreation at both the Southorn and Macpherson indoor stadia for children and youths found playing spon- taneously, the Children's Playground Association has developed the project further this year. The present daily attendance at each stadium is about three hundred and fifty and the association has already made a start in working with the older age group of 15 years upwards.

25 To enable young people to make use of their leisure time more creatively, various youth organizations have provided special summer activities for students. The department has for the past four years been offering secondary school students opportunities to act as voluntary helpers in children's summer clubs which were conducted from the community or social centres. These volunteers are first given an orienta- tion course in preparation for their first assignment. In 1965 the projects were extended to include work-cum-holiday camps, overnight expedi- tions, fishing, canoeing, shooting or other pastimes, and more than two thousand participated in and enjoyed such activities.

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