East Asian Games Youth Centre opens
By Ceci Chan

The Youth Centre's exhibition room.

The opening ceremony of the East Asian Games Youth Centre was held on February 26 in Taipa.

The Centre is the main station for training helpers and volunteers of the East Asian Games 2005. By offering the training courses, it can increase the athletic knowledge of teenagers and volunteers and improve their service standard for the coming sports meet. "The training course for volunteers has already started," said Tong Pui I, director of the East Asian Games Centre. "We now have enough classrooms as the Centre was built."

The Centre provides a suitable place for youths to use. The previous volunteers' training centre has a limited space that led to insufficient classrooms provision. Courses needed to be divided into different sections and lacked a centralized learning time and environment. "We now have a place of our own so that our volunteers can be more concentrated and it is more efficient to deal with many volunteers who are having their training course at the same time," said Tong.

The Youth Centre's conference room.

The Youth Centre has various kinds of facilities for young people. For instance, there are an Internet

room, table-tennis room, snooker room, band room and so on. It also has other function rooms such as conference rooms, an exhibition area, multi-function room, reception room and study room. Most of the facilities are free for users except for the conference rooms and exhibition area, which are charged at reasonable prices. "We welcome different kinds of organizations to book our facilities," Tong said.

The slogan of the Centre: "We welcome you to build up your activities" is aimed to encourage all the youths in Macao to develop a healthy hobby by their interest.

In the future, the Youth Centre will arrange various activities for teenagers to participate. After the 4th East Asian Games which will be held in 2005, the Youth Centre will focus on other coming sports events, said Tong.