BetBlocker has partnered with Yellow Scarf to expand its service to Eastern European countries including Ukrainian, Polish and Russian-speaking communities.
The initiative, directed towards Eastern European communities in the Midlands of the UK and supported by funding from GambleAware, seeks to address the language barriers that prevent vulnerable individuals from accessing gambling harm prevention services.
The new offerings will help serve Eastern European populations who make up a significant portion of the UK’s immigrant communities.
Duncan Garvie, BetBlocker’s Founder and Trustee, said, “A significant priority for BetBlocker is expanding the languages that we can support. As a tech solution to a complex problem, ensuring that users have as smooth and easy a set-up process as possible is paramount to our success in minimising gambling harms. If a user can’t get our app set-up, we have failed.
Yellow Scarf’s Head of Development, Tomasz Jarecki, added, “It is a great honour for us to support BetBlocker in making their project more accessible and reaching wider communities – translation into a national language ensures that the more vulnerable people will be able to receive support that would otherwise miss them.
More than 25 percent of Eastern Europeans living in the UK still struggle, despite their best efforts, to fluently speak English in unusual circumstances – and it raises our spirits to find partners such as BetBlocker, willing to put in an extra effort to support instead of judge.”
The new effort builds on BetBlocker’s prior multilingual expansions. This includes the launch of its Portuguese-language software in September 2024, which is an outreach to native Portuguese speakers across the globe.
About the charities
Yellow Scarf is a charity that focuses on providing support and therapy to Eastern European groups. The charity has identified the need for providing support services in native languages, citing that over 25 percent of individuals in these communities struggle with a language barrier and struggle with English in unfamiliar or high-stress situations.
BetBlock is a charity that provides free blocking software that ensures anonymity of its users. It helps manage gambling by restricting a device from accessing online gambling operator websites for a period of a person’s choosing between 24 hours and 5 years.
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