Small Business of the Year Finalist 2025
Recognized for our impact in supporting Australia’s first responders
Warrior Strength
True strength is not enduring trauma alone.
Bellator Fortitudinem is a safe place for first responders, offering peer-led, lived-experience support that fosters connection,
recovery, and hope.
Coming soon' 24/7 connection, support, and pathways to help, when it matters most.
Peer Support
Lived experience understanding
Bellator App
Understanding, tools, and
referral pathways to support
recovery.
Events & Workshops
Resources
Peer-led connection, learning, and recovery — together, in community.
Who
We Are
Bellator Fortitudinem means Warrior Strength — and to us, that means having the courage to show up honestly, stand beside one another, and never leave our own behind.
We are a peer-led community built by first responders, for first responders. There is no rank here. No judgement. Just people who have walked through the fire and understand what it means to carry grief, trauma, moral injury, burnout, and loss, and to keep going anyway.
I founded Bellator from lived experience. After more than two decades as a NSW Police Officer, I know what it’s like to show up to the worst day of someone else’s life and then be expected to return home and function as if nothing happened. I know what it’s like to carry those moments quietly, and to feel let down by systems that were meant to protect us.
Bellator exists to change that.
This is not about box-ticking or surface-level self-care. It’s about meaningful connection, peer support, and creating the kind of backup many of us needed but never received, during service, through transition, and beyond the uniform.
If you’ve worn the uniform, stood behind the badge, or carried the weight of someone else’s trauma, you belong here.
This is Bellator Fortitudinem.
We’ve got you.
Nick White
CEO, Founder & Director
Compassionate, accessible pathways when people are struggling
When people do experience distress, Bellator Fortitudinem supports them through compassionate, peer-led connection and clear referral pathways to appropriate care. We provide non-clinical support that centres dignity, understanding, and lived experience. Bellator acts as a safe point of connection — helping individuals, families, and supporters navigate available services, reduce barriers to access, and stay connected during vulnerable periods such as injury, transition out of service, or post-crisis recovery. Our support model aligns with the NSPS emphasis on accessibility, holistic care, and increased connection. By complementing — not duplicating — clinical and crisis services, Bellator helps bridge gaps in the system, ensuring that no one is left navigating trauma, recovery, or suicide risk alone.
Reducing distress before it becomes crisis
Bellator Fortitudinem contributes to suicide prevention by strengthening connection, reducing isolation, and supporting early intervention within first responder and frontline communities.Our prevention work focuses on building protective factors that are known to reduce suicidal distress — including belonging, purpose, peer connection, and trauma-informed understanding. Through peer-led programs, community events, education, and lived-experience advocacy, we help normalise help-seeking and create safer pathways for people to speak up early, before distress escalates.Bellator's prevention approach recognises that suicide risk is shaped not only by mental health, but by cumulative trauma, moral injury, life transitions, workplace culture, and social disconnection. By addressing these factors through community-based, peer-informed initiatives, Bellator supports the NSPS goal of preventing suicidal distress from emerging in the first place.
Bellator operates under a robust governance framework, with a skills-based Board, clear decision-making processes, risk management, and transparent reporting. This ensures accountability, sustainability, and trust with members, partners, and funders.
Bellator aligns peer-led practice with contemporary evidence in trauma recovery and suicide prevention. We track outcomes, collect participant feedback, and commit to continuous learning and improvement to ensure our work remains effective, ethical, and responsive.
We prioritise the wellbeing of our peer workforce, volunteers, and leaders through trauma-informed systems, clear boundaries, supervision pathways, and sustainable models of care — recognising that a healthy workforce is foundational to suicide prevention.
Lived experience is central to everything we do — not as storytelling alone, but as leadership. People with lived and living experience of trauma, PTSD, and suicidal distress are embedded across governance, program design, delivery, and evaluation.
Aligned with Australia’s National Suicide Prevention Strategy
Bellator Fortitudinem is a proud organisational member of Suicide Prevention Australia, reflecting our
commitment to best-practice, evidence-informed, and lived-experience-led suicide prevention.
Our work is directly aligned with the National Suicide Prevention Strategy (2024–2034) and its three core
domains: Prevention, Support, and Critical Enablers.
You Belong Here
At Bellator Fortitudinem, we see you — not just the role you serve, but the human underneath. Whether you’re seeking support, looking to give back, or want to stand beside those who protect our communities, there’s a place for you here.
Become a Member
At Bellator Fortitudinem, we see you — not just the role you serve, but the human underneath. Whether you’re seeking support, looking to give back, or want to stand beside those who protect our communities, there’s a place for you here.
“You don’t have to earn your place here. You already have one.”
Donate or Partner with Us
Your contribution helps us deliver life-saving programs, develop our 24/7 app, and provide emergency support when it matters most. Every dollar goes toward creating safer, stronger support systems for first responders.
Are you an organisation, business, or individual who believes in our mission? We’re actively seeking values-aligned partners to help us expand our reach, amplify our message, and co-create change.
“Let’s build a future where support for first responders is the standard, not the exception.”
Bellator Fortitudinem App
The Bellator Fortitudinem App is being built to ensure that no first responder faces distress alone — especially in moments when support feels hardest to reach.
Designed with lived experience at its core, the app will provide 24/7 connection to peer-informed support, clear referral pathways, and trusted services for first responders and frontline workers across Australia. It will act as a central access point for help, guidance, and next steps — whether someone is in crisis, navigating recovery, or supporting someone they care about.
To bring the Bellator App to life in 2026, we are working to raise $100,000 to support development, safety, governance, and rollout. Your donation directly contributes to building a tool that strengthens early intervention, connection, and suicide prevention for those who protect our communities every day.
Together, we can put support in the hands of first responders — when and where they need it most.
Voices from the Frontline
Real words from first responders and individuals we’ve supported
Suicide prevention does not happen by chance — it requires sustained investment in community, connection, and care.
Bellator Fortitudinem relies on the generosity of donors, partners, and funders to deliver peer-led recovery programs, education, referral pathways, and suicide prevention initiatives for first responders and frontline families across Australia.
Your Support Saves Lives by Strengthening Connection
Your support directly enables frontline workers to access safe, understanding, and life-saving support — often at the moments they need it most.
Together, we can ensure that those who protect us are never left without protection themselves.