Two friends talking about what they’ve just heard.
Why lived experience?
Experience, not speculation.
There is a difference between knowing about gambling harm and having lived through it.
The Prevention Project is built around lived experience because it can create conversations that traditional education sometimes struggles to reach.
Our founder has experienced the excitement of gambling while young, the belief that everything was under control, the progression into addiction and the devastating consequences that followed.
But he has also experienced recovery.
Rebuilding relationships. Becoming debt-free. Creating stability. Finding purpose. Building a future that once felt impossible.
That complete story matters.
We don’t use lived experience simply to show people how bad gambling can become. We use it to help people understand how it gets there — and to show that things can change.
Our approach
Conversation, not lecture.
We want people to be part of the conversation.
That means asking questions. Challenging us. Laughing at times. Being surprised. Sitting silently during some of the more difficult parts. Disagreeing with something we’ve said. And hopefully continuing to talk about it after we’ve gone.
Our delivery is deliberately approachable.
We aren’t there to bang an anti-gambling drum or tell every young person never to gamble.
We’re there to give them something many people experiencing gambling harm wish they’d had earlier:
Understanding.
- Understanding of how gambling works.
- Understanding of how something that begins as entertainment can change.
- Understanding of the warning signs.
- Understanding of the world of gambling advertising and normalisation around them.
- And understanding that if gambling ever does become a problem, asking for help is something they can do.
Because the impact we’re looking for isn’t necessarily somebody putting their hand up at the end of a session. Sometimes it’s:
Somebody recognising their own behaviour.
A young person walking to the bus after school, still thinking about the conversation they were part of earlier that day.
We don’t want to be remembered as another lesson. We want to start a conversation that continues after we leave.
The experience is personal. The purpose is prevention.
Whether you’re a school, a sports club, an organisation, or someone who needs to talk — start with a conversation.
Book a conversation