It won the Best Government Project Award for 2012 for a campaign called What's gambling really costing you?

The campaign was produced by Why Documentaries for Multicultural Health Communication Services and was funded by the Responsible Gambling Fund from the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing.

Why Documentaries producer and director Sandra Pires said she was very happy with the result and what it meant for the campaign, Wollongong and her company.

SBS won the Grand Award for its foresight in bringing Pop Asia to Australia.

In the Best Government Project category Why Documentaries was up against councils, the NSW Police and the State Library.

"We did really well," she said. "We had two projects up as finalists."

The winning project was produced in five languages with the DVD resource available in Chinese, Vietnamese, Greek, Italian and Arabic.

There were also television commercials, print advertising and an online campaign for the project.

"We did a number of focus groups with the communities and worked with problem gamblers to develop the resource," she said.

"Last year we were finalists in best small business for our work and in 2010 our project It's not a disgrace, it's dementia took out the Grand Award. We are still producing that series.

"This is very exciting and it puts us as a leading content production house specialising in multicultural work and we hope this will benefit the whole of the Illawarra."