Every person lost to suicide is a tragedy affecting families, friends, colleagues and the wider community. Emotional distress, self-harm and suicide tragically still affect far too many lives. The majority of people who end their lives by suicide are not in touch with mental health services around the time of their death. However, they almost always have had contact with someone. The responsibility for people at risk of suicide is often seen to lie with specialist mental health services, while others are wary of getting involved. At 4 Mental Health, we believe that everyone can potentially help someone in distress or with suicidal thoughts. Practical and effective interventions in the form of self-help or compassionate support from another person, can make a real difference to someone who is in distress, ideally even before they start considering suicide. Suicide is not the inevitable outcome of suicidal thoughts. Most people who have suicidal thoughts are ambivalent about dying but may be unable to imagine other potential solutions. They may not recognise they are struggling or they may prefer self-reliance. Also, they may not know who to approach or be reluctance to disclose their feelings. Every contact a suicidal individual has with another person is a potential opportunity to intervene. With the right support people can find their way through a suicidal crisis and recover. We will share our experience of projects which implement a public health, up-stream approach of strategically building wellbeing and resilience, compassion, emotional literacy, help seeking and universal safety planning. We will demonstrate how a built-in safety feature can promote the use of safety planning, even if a person does not feel able to disclose their suicidal thoughts. We will share evaluation feedback and examples of the impact of delivering the Connecting with People training across a range of community settings. The aim of this presentation is to provide fresh thinking and share our experience of strategic and practical ways to implement evidence-informed, best practice public health and community interventions.