ENG-1958 — Page 231

SOCIAL WELFARE

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visit the parents regularly at home and to see to it that the life of the Club is so directed as not to form a barrier between the children and their families. Towards the end of the year the Association transferred its headquarters to a building of its own which will also form a centre for Club leaders and for a variety of training courses for social workers. The Rotary Club of Hong Kong has met a large proportion of the cost of this important project.

The Chinese Y.M.C.A. and the Y.W.C.A. also provide several thousand children and young persons with clubs and recreational centres where they can follow their bent in vocational training, handicrafts, amateur dramatics or study. The Girl Guides' and the Boy Scouts' Associations continue to expand, their membership having reached some 2,000 and 5,000 respectively. Their work for young people is too familiar to require description here, except to note the very successful visit paid to Hong Kong by Lady Baden-Powell in March.

At the Holiday Camp at Silvermine Bay on Lantau Island, some 3,500 children from poor families, selected mainly from the Clubs, spent a week's holiday in open country by the sea. A second camp established by the Lions Club of Hong Kong at Junk Bay and run by the Chinese Y.M.C.A. was opened in the summer and took in ninety poor children, together with 300 children from families who are better off. The Chinese Y.M.C.A. Swimming and Recreation Centre at Lai Chi Kok was most popular, especially during the summer when at least 2,000 young people used it every day.

There is a great need for children's libraries where those who cannot afford to buy books and cannot get into school are able to read decent books and magazines. The two libraries run by the Children's Playground Association at the Southorn and Queen Elizabeth Centres were together used by an average of 650 children every day. The Hong Kong Junior Chamber of Commerce equipped and stocked two more libraries during the year, making a total of fifteen since the Chamber first became interested in this form of public service in 1951. One of these, very recently opened in a Resettlement Estate, is already used by some 600 children every day. The mobile library van presented by the