ENG-1960 — Page 215

SOCIAL WELFARE

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workers and half intending to take up this work. University undergraduates and Post-Secondary College students worked with the various sections of the Department during the year for practical training as part of their social work course.

Community Development. World Refugee Year officially came to a close in July and Hong Kong has gained greatly in its facilities for social services as a result of many generous donations. Among the major projects proposed are a reception centre for children in need of care, a Home for abandoned crippled children and also a new holiday camp for slum children near the sea. Not least is the programme for five four-storeyed community centres.

Blocks of tenement flats continue to spring up in the resettle- ment estates in the unceasing effort to provide adequate housing for over half a million squatters who are still living in primitive conditions; these densely populated estates will each house up to 75,000 people. The settlers are often recent immigrants, strangers to the Colony and to each other; as part of the process of integrating them more closely and making them feel that they are citizens of Hong Kong, the Social Welfare Department plans to administer community centres for each of the larger estates. The first of these four-storeyed centres was built at Wong Tai Sin Resettlement Estate at a cost of $1,150,000, donated by the United States Government, and was opened in July. In it there are a children's day nursery for 200, a family casework centre, and practical training courses in engineering, all run by voluntary agencies. This Centre has already become a focal point of vigorous and varied communal activity on the estate; clubs for mothers, fathers, children and young people and classes in drama, music, Chinese art and shadow-boxing have disclosed and stimulated a wide range of interests and a great desire for proficiency. There is no lack of self-expression and the first signs may be discerned of spontaneous initiative from within these groups-seeds, perhaps, of a nascent community feeling. Every day 900 adults and children use the library of over 12,000 volumes.

A second centre will open in Spring 1961 at Tsuen Wan, the rapidly growing industrial town in the New Territories; this is financed from the United Kingdom World Refugee Year appeal, which has also provided donations sufficient for two more centres, each to cost about $14 million. The Hong Kong Council of Social