A small team from Ballarat City soccer club has taken what it has learnt off the field and shaped this in a bid to better equip other sporting clubs with sustainable skills and structures to promote mental fitness.

Their program Enhance to Empower, or E2E, is in its early stages and is designed to complement - not compete with - existing mental health support programs, particularly in a city with an above-average suicide rate.

For example, City FC was the pilot club in Ballarat for the Jake Edwards-founded Outside the Locker Room, which provides mental health education and welfare supports to community groups such as sporting clubs.

E2E chairman David Sproules, the former City FC chairman, said the program was great and still needed, but E2E aimed to keep building on these structures.

"What's missing was the part after," Mr Sproules said. "You might get a good speaker like Wayne Schwass from Puka Up, but the club's not set up for what's next.

"...One thing from the pandemic we've learned is how important a role people within sporting clubs can have - coaches, presidents and team managers are all people that you can go to for help.

"So often people are involved in sport and stop because they've had a bad experience. We need to recognise the signs."

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E2E has worked with mental fitness guru Bek Smith on creating a vision they will launch in a connecting Ballarat mental health gala ball this month.

The initiative has formed ties with Ballarat Community Health, Ballarat and District Suicide Awareness Network, Vitality First Aid Solutions and Raven Collective, a social enterprise to up-skill family violence survivors.

Already, E2E has major backing from Haymes Paint with company director Matt Haymes saying this was about giving back and supporting a whole-of-community approach to tackling a widespread health crisis.

"COVID has really shifted our team and their families - there's struggles and we have a responsibility to our team to look after them," Mr Haymes said. "We're lending our name because it's so important to the community and the least we can do is say how can we help?

"We want to help get this up and running because if these things don't get off the ground, you wonder where people might otherwise end up."

Mr Haymes said sporting clubs, like business, had strong connections across community and particularly so when it came to youngsters who were still grappling in the wake of home learning.

E2E general manager and founder Stacey Burlund when you considered only a small fraction of players became elite athletes in their chosen sport, sporting clubs had an important supportive role for everyone else playing to be connected and part of the community.

"[Community] sporting clubs have a lot of support for physical health but the bare minimum for mental health," Ms Burlund said. "...What happens to the rest of the kids, who are not elite, is that if we can really build and support them, that can only be improving our community with skills to face whatever they might do in the future.

"Sometimes parents are busy with everyday work and might miss things. We want to give young people the tools to get through - to educate and offer them continued support through sport."

E2E's gala ball has been dubbed a "friend-raiser" as a way to help rally more people to get excited about going out, dressing up and connecting with others now pandemic restrictions have eased.

The event will feature Sydney Olympic Taekwondo champion Lauren Burns, who has carved experience in nutrition and naturopathy. Federation University graduate and motivational speaker Jody Dontje will be emcee with HALT (Hope Assistance Local Tradies) founder Jeremy Forbes, the Castlemaine-based mental health advocate who featured in a TED Talk.

The ball will also be a platform for Ballarat entertainers in a bid to help boost live music in the wake of lockdowns.

E2E's mental health gala ball is at the Goods Shed on October 15. For details, visit Enhance to Empower's Facebook page.

If you or someone you know is in need of crisis support, phone Lifeline 13 11 14.

Help is also available, but not limited, via the following organisations. The key message is you are not alone.

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