YGAM are delighted to be one of the charity partners for the upcoming KnowNow conference on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Gambling Industry.
YGAM are delighted to be one of the charity partners for the upcoming KnowNow conference on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Gambling Industry. The conference is taking place on Tuesday 22 May in London, where the YGAM Chair, Rachel Jones has been invited to speak.
Over the past four years, YGAM have developed an impressive track record of the creation, piloting, delivery and evaluation of a high quality, accredited and quality-assured education programme to minimise gambling-related harm among young people. This track record has been developed by working in close collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders who have responsibility for the learning and development of young people and students from schools, colleagues, third sector organisations, community groups etc. In addition, YGAM have uniquely cultivated a positive relationship with many of the UK’s largest gambling operators whom have supported YGAM’s development to enable us to build these resources, support with external accreditation and quality-assurance costs and then the national roll-out and delivery.
In this time YGAM are continuing to establish itself as the leading UK charity, specifically around education to minimise gambling & gaming harm-minimisation in the United Kingdom. Last year alone we worked with almost 28,000 young people and collaborated with almost 300 educational organisations to deliver our programme. We have been fortunate to have amassed support from a number of operators including Ladbrokes Coral, Paddy Power Betfair, Caesars Entertainment, National Lottery, Sky Betting & Gaming, Genting Casinos. Betway, bet365, Aspers, Bet Victor, William Hill, Lottoland, BACTA, Association of British Bookmakers, Gambling Business Group, Silcock Leisure, White Hat Gaming, Senet Group, Microgaming, Big Lottery and Kindred to name but a few.
YGAM has a principle focus on education and that journey has taken us to also developing student led peer education programmes in partner universities, where we employ students in part-time Living Wage roles to deliver our programmes to their wider peer group, creating awareness and promoting safer and healthier gambling or gaming. The journey has also lead us to developing, piloting and evaluating formal Pearson Customised qualifications for colleagues who work in customer facing roles in the gambling industry. This journey is also now taking us to developing a potential apprenticeship standard and end-point assessment specifically for the gambling industry. Our authentic approach, underpinned by robust accreditation and evaluation and delivered by qualified practitioners is gaining momentum; harm minimisation will always underpin our work. However, what we are seeing is a growing number of students who want to enter the gambling industry and not just see it as a ‘temporary job’, but potentially as a career. Through our trading subsidiary YGAM Innovation Limited, we want to work collaboratively with the industry to cultivate these opportunities for young people and even potentially develop a national standard for those entering the industry for the first time, through an apprenticeship or formal qualification route. We’d love to support operators to come together and use their individual Apprenticeship Levy in a collaborative way (i.e. what is termed a digital envelop) to deliver value to the industry by further raising training standards, qualifications, improving colleague retention and building upon a diverse industry to attract and retain talented young people and students.
