Who we are
About Vibrant Health Advocates – Solace
A Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation rooted in Peebles and working across Tweeddale.
A Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation rooted in Peebles and working across Tweeddale.
Vibrant Health Advocates – Solace is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation registered in Scotland and operating across Peebles and the wider Tweeddale area. We exist because good nutrition should not be a luxury reserved for households with comfortable incomes. The Borders has a particular character: rural beauty sitting alongside rural isolation, a strong sense of community alongside pockets of real, quiet hardship that rarely make headlines. We know this landscape intimately, and we have shaped every aspect of our work to fit it.
Our programme is led by qualified nutrition practitioners and experienced community cooks who understand that changing the way a family eats is not simply a matter of information — it is a matter of confidence, time, and practical skill. We work in community halls, church rooms, school canteens, and wherever families feel safe and welcome. We partner with local GPs and community nurses who refer patients managing diet-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure, and with the local primary schools to run afterschool family cooking clubs that bring children and parents to the same stove.
As a SCIO, we are governed by a volunteer board of trustees who are themselves members of the Peebles community, drawn from backgrounds in healthcare, education, social work, and the third sector. Our small paid staff team is supported by a dedicated cohort of trained volunteer facilitators, many of whom first came to us as participants. That journey — from the family who needed help to the neighbour who now helps others — is something we are profoundly proud of, and it speaks to the kind of organisation we are trying to build: one that grows its own capacity from within the community it serves.
Your neighbours — our team in Peebles
Side by side at the hob — the way learning happens
The shared table — the heart of every session
Vibrant Health Advocates – Solace began when a community nurse working in Peebles noticed a pattern she could not ignore. Patients were being advised by their GPs to improve their diets — to eat more vegetables, cut back on processed food, reduce salt and saturated fat — but when she asked them honestly what got in the way, the answers were always the same: money, skills, time, and a sense that 'eating healthy' was something other families did.
She brought together a small group of like-minded people from across the town — a retired home economics teacher, a social worker, a local chef, and a handful of parents who shared the concern — and they ran their first six-week cooking course in the back room of a community centre on a shoestring budget. The waiting list for the second course was longer than the course itself.
In the years since that first session, Vibrant Health Advocates – Solace has grown into a recognised part of the Peebles support landscape, formalised as a SCIO, funded through a combination of charitable grants, Scottish Government community health funding, and the generosity of individual donors across the Borders. We have expanded from that one course to a rolling annual programme, added one-to-one support for families in acute crisis, developed a school partnership strand, and trained dozens of community volunteers.
The founding insight has not changed: people do not need to be told that vegetables are good for them. They need someone to stand beside them at the hob and show them how to turn a bag of lentils and some root vegetables into something the whole family will actually eat.
Vibrant Health Advocates – Solace exists to ensure that every family living in Peebles and Tweeddale, regardless of income, has access to the practical knowledge, skills, and confidence needed to eat well every day. We deliver hands-on healthy-eating education grounded in the realities of tight household budgets, limited time, and the specific food landscape of the Scottish Borders — supporting physical health, mental wellbeing, and the dignity that comes from feeding your family nourishing food you cooked yourself.
We believe that good nutrition is a right, not a privilege, and we will keep working until the gap between that belief and the lived experience of Borders families has closed.
Vibrant Health Advocates – Solace is governed by a board of trustees who bring together expertise in community health, finance, and third-sector governance — and who are all, first and foremost, part of this community. They are supported by our small, dedicated staff team and a growing network of trained volunteer facilitators. Together, they ensure that the organisation remains accountable to the people it serves, financially sound, and focused relentlessly on impact rather than activity.
There are many ways to support our work — from volunteering your time to making a donation or referring a family you know.
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