Additional funding to help local community groups prevent gambling harm

The Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation has announced additional funding to support the rollout of five new projects aimed at preventing gambling harm.

Funded under the Local Prevention Grants program, these projects will pilot new ideas and build local community capacity to prevent gambling harm. They will also provide insights and evidence on initiatives that work and can be transferred across communities.

Commencing in June, the five new projects target hard-to-reach groups and communities in regional Victoria. The projects include:

• My moola (First Nations Foundation) – this project aims to reduce counterproductive gambling behaviours in Aboriginal communities by providing financial literacy training to staff in Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations across Victoria.
• Three sides of the coin (Link Health and Community) – this statewide project will build on an existing repertoire of theatrical vignettes to support education and raise awareness of gambling harm within vulnerable communities, including culturally and linguistically diverse groups in outer urban areas and people in prison settings.
• Promoting responsible gambling in local workplaces (Child and Family Services Ballarat) – this project will partner with local businesses to pilot work place activities that will prevent the onset and stigma associated with gambling harm in the Ballarat area.
• Wyndham gambling project (Horn of Africa Communities Network) – this project will provide sustainable, culturally and linguistically appropriate education, skills and resources to five refugee and newly arrived migrant communities in Melbourne’s outer west.
• Starting the conversation (Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative) – working with local Aboriginal groups, artists and organisations in the Greater Geelong area, this project will develop a suite of videos and resources with culturally safe and appropriate messages about gambling harm.

These five projects add to twelve other local prevention projects currently underway. All seventeen projects are expected to be completed in June 2017.

The total budget for the Local Prevention Grants Program for 2015–2017 is $3.54 million.