ENG-1953 — Page 141

SOCIAL SERVICES

care of juvenile prostitutes and children who are in moral danger. A home for the girls, which was established in 1952 by Catholic sisters who have had long experience in such work, is now looking after 40 girls, placed in the Sisters' care by the Moral Welfare Officer. The Good Shepherd Sisters are now planning to erect a building which will accommodate 100 girls, and the new home is expected to be ready in 1954. !

Youth Organizations. In Hong Kong, where the majority of boys and girls have to start earning their own living on reaching adolescence, youth organizations direct their attention. mainly to children between the ages of nine and sixteen. The Colony has 75 clubs for children from poor homes and these have a total membership of about 3,000. They are either run by the Boys and Girls Clubs Association or are affiliated to it, as in the case of six clubs managed by the Social Welfare Office. Club children learn handicrafts as part of their training and specimens of articles they have made were exhibited at UNESCO's second Information and Study Seminar, held in Japan this year, at which Hong Kong was represented by two delegates.

The co-ordinating body for all youth welfare activities in Hong Kong is the Standing Conference of Youth Organizations. The Conference runs a Youth Leadership Training Course, first started in 1951 as a course of 12 months duration, and now lengthened to 20 months. The Conference also runs the Silvermine Bay Holiday Camp, whose building was a gift from the Rotary Club of Hong Kong last year; this camp is proving an unqualified success. Over 2,000 children from poor families and orphanages have spent a week's holiday there during the past 12 months. Moreover, the opening during the summer of The Queen Elizabeth Youth Centre in Kowloon has provided very fine premises for the expansion of youth activities and of many other kinds of welfare work in Kowloon.

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