If this story impacts you, you can call Lifeline on 13 11 14 for support. "There's lots of different waves when you lose someone, but the suddenness of suicide is really difficult." That's what the Border's Alice Schnelle found when she lost her father, Roger, 12 months ago. Ms Schnelle and her Dad were close; they ran the family accounting firm he founded, Schnelle Partners, side by side. Mr Schnelle was also a Rotary Club of Albury North member for more than 20 years and was heavily involved in community life. "He's done so much community work for Albury-Wodonga, so it really rocked a lot of people," Ms Schnelle said. "Things will happen, like I'll drive past and see the Rotary market sign on Sundays and think 'I wonder if Dad's working?' and then you'll have the pangs and remember that he's not here anymore. "The more time that goes past the more your brain realises it's real. "If you don't really know anyone, you just hear stories, you don't think it's something that could actually happen to you - until it does." Tears welled in Rotary Club Albury North president Anne Hayward's eyes when she was asked about Mr Schnelle. "Don't ask me, I'll cry," she said. President elect Sue Paini said the death was a tragedy. "Just shattering, really devastating," she said. "He was young from our point of view, very vibrant, had a great sense of humor and he will be incredibly missed." Since Mr Schnelle's death the Rotary Club has embarked on a new community fundraising project with the money set for improving youth mental health and preventing suicide. Schnelle Partners is a major sponsor. Ms Schnelle wanted to be a part in any way she could. "Obviously mental health awareness is really important to us, as is the amazing work that Rotary does for our local community," she said. "And it's been really important for them to try to raise funds and try and help make changes locally for people that are struggling with mental illness and start people talking about it." The Rotary Club launched its Travel Escape Club fundraiser today and aims to raise $60,000 by selling 800 travel raffle tickets, with half of the $150 ticket sales going straight to community mental health projects. In the immediate future the money will go towards developing and promoting the Border-made documentary on suicide, 'Solstice', to make it available for general mental health conversation training and allow the director to partner with the Australian Teachers of Media to create curriculum based teaching notes on the ATM website for schools across the country to use. The Rotary Club also plans to fund mental health first aid training courses on the Border. Ms Paini said traditionally Rotary had supported things like drought, fire and flood relief. "But mental health is something that falls out of all those events and is compounded by all those events," she said. Ms Hayward said COVID-19 and community isolation had added to people's troubles. "We are already working with community people, so we need to be aware when we're talking and being with community groups and supporting these sorts of people, that we can see if there's a problem with them," she said. "And mental health first aid training is something that will actually help quite a lot of our members to recognise that that person might need help." IN OTHER NEWS: Ms Paini did a mental health first aid course 15 years ago, but said she wished she'd been able to do one more recently to help her speaking with people, like Mr Schnelle, who were struggling. "I don't know if we were having great conversations with him before hand, because he withdrew to some extent, which is a signal," she said. "And I certainly hesitated to go out into one of the local communities that we were supporting with a barbeque and a fireside chat after they'd had a major trauma. "I felt that I couldn't add value to that community, you know, having those conversations was something I found quite frightening and better training certainly would have been helpful in that circumstance, I would have been more positive about going out into those situations." Ms Paini said her club wanted to offer the training to all members of the community. "It's recognising that there's an issue, but it's also about being confident about the way you talk to people who've been through trauma of some sort," she said. "We're all afraid to initiate conversations or walk away from conversations when they might get a bit fraught, because we're scared that we might actually say something or do something wrong. "So the mental health first aid training really is a lot about giving people that confidence to actually have those conversations, which are often just casual conversations that can be incredibly supportive for people." In her work, Ms Schnelle too said she could see the potential benefits of mental health first aid training. "We work with clients who, especially in the last two years, have gone through some really tough times, who've lost people and who have really been struggling," she said. "Being able to start conversations earlier about mental health and starting with young adults in school, I think it's really important, because for so long people never spoke about mental illness and it's only been recently where that change has started. IN OTHER NEWS: "It's really important for people to normalise it ... having a mental health issue, especially as a young adult, you can feel really alone and anything we can do to make people feel not alone, and there's lots of people who feel the same way, is a really important message. "We don't want it to take until so many people in the community have lost someone to suicide. "We need to do something or try and take initiative now and start conversations now, so people don't have to know someone who passed away from suicide, it's the most horrible, traumatising experience. "I just want no one to ever lose someone they love to suicide." Ms Schnelle said it was hard going into work each day, where she was so strongly reminded of her father, but it had come to be a safe space thanks to her colleagues. "Our office is amazing, we always have been, but the closeness has become even more since Dad passed away," she said. "Having to check emails and do things that I'd normally do with him every day, it was really hard especially at the start, but I also feel really lucky that I got to learn so much from him and spend that time with him. "It's special place to be able to be there now and the legacy of Dad and everything he built and we can continue that now." Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: