Forty participants from Project City received their graduate certificates and shared their training experience to the press. According to most of the graduates, they have learnt new working skills and at the same time improved their interpersonal skills. Besides, the Project enabled them to re-construct their self-confidence for entering the workforce.

Project City is one of the pilot projects of the Preventive and Rehabilitation Services for Substance Abusers and it is funded by the Beat Drug Fund. The Project's service recipients are youths who are dropped out of school, unemployed, in the process of job hunting or occasional substance abusers (with priority for female drug abusers) and less than 21 years of age. Participants have to complete three months of training in which they will take practical courses such as hair styling, cosmetics, bakery and so on. In addition, they will also enroll in different kinds of self-enhancement groups and adventure training to enforce their prevention ability to drugs.

During the graduation ceremony, certificates were given to graduates from the first and second phases of the Project. Most of them were referred by our outreaching social workers and about half of them were occasional substance abusers. The Project requires students to attend their course, and to participate in group activities for approximately three hours each day during the three months of training.

Miss Rainbow Cheung, Supervisor of Project City, explained the reasons for constructing a series of programmes for female youths, "Many of the social organizations only provide training programmes for male youths. There are seldom any programmes for female youths of 14 to 15 years of age that are dropped out of school or unemployed. Due to the fact that they do not have any professional skills, they can fall into social traps easily and thus followed the wrong path. Therefore, there is indeed an urge for this kind of training programmes. We are glad to see these graduates have gained their confidence back to enter the workforce, and they have escaped from the temptation of drugs."