About Us
Part of the community
Part of the community
we serve
A Scottish charitable organisation rooted in Wishaw, built from genuine relationships with harbour workers.
Vibrant Health Advocates - Onyx is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation based in Wishaw, North Lanarkshire. We were established to address a specific and largely overlooked gap: the occupational health needs of workers from inland communities who travel regularly to Scotland's coastal and port facilities to earn their living. Wishaw has a long, quiet tradition of sending its people to the harbours — to the fish markets, the quaysides, the processing sheds, and the vessels themselves — and those workers have rarely had access to health support that truly understood their work.
Our approach is information-led and community-centred. We do not provide clinical services, but we are expert navigators of the occupational health landscape, helping workers understand their rights, recognise symptoms that warrant medical attention, and access the services they are entitled to. We produce printed and digital resources, run drop-in sessions at departure points and community venues in Wishaw, and maintain close relationships with port welfare officers and fishing industry contacts up and down Scotland's west coast.
We are governed by a board of trustees who bring together expertise in occupational health policy, fishing industry welfare, and community development in North Lanarkshire. Our work is funded through a combination of charitable grants, community fundraising, and support from statutory partners who recognise the importance of reaching workers who might otherwise fall through the gaps in mainstream occupational health provision.
Vibrant Health Advocates - Onyx grew out of conversations that began at a community centre in Wishaw more than a decade ago, when a group of local people — some with connections to the fishing trade, others working in health and social care — started comparing notes on the injuries, illnesses, and unspoken struggles they were seeing among harbour workers who had come home from the coast.
The pattern was consistent: workers who had spent years in physically punishing conditions, who had never received coherent occupational health guidance, and who did not know that better information — or different choices — might have protected them. A founding group formalised those conversations into a charitable organisation, built the first set of resources with input from workers themselves, and began distributing them through the fishing associations and community networks that people already trusted.
In the years since, we have grown steadily — not by scaling into something generic, but by going deeper into what this specific community needs. We have adapted our resources as working practices at Scottish harbours have changed, as new health risks have emerged, and as the workforce itself has shifted. We have always remained anchored to Wishaw, to the particular character of a Lanarkshire town whose people carry the harbour with them even when they are far from the coast, and to the belief that good occupational health information, delivered with respect and without jargon, genuinely changes lives.
Vibrant Health Advocates - Onyx is committed to ensuring that every person from Wishaw and the surrounding North Lanarkshire area who works in fishing, port operations, or associated harbour industries has access to accurate, relevant, and practically useful occupational health information — so that they can protect their physical wellbeing, identify health risks before they become serious conditions, and make informed decisions about their working lives. We believe that geography and industry should never determine the quality of health support a worker receives, and we hold ourselves to the standard of making that belief real in the lives of the people we serve.
Vibrant Health Advocates - Onyx is led by a small, dedicated board of trustees who bring a combination of professional expertise and lived connection to the communities and industries we serve. Our trustees give their time voluntarily and govern the charity with care, ensuring that every decision we make stays true to the needs of Wishaw's harbour-working community. Alongside the board, a small staff team and a network of trained volunteers carry out the day-to-day work of outreach, resource development, and relationship-building that makes our support reach the people who need it most.
Whether you have skills to share, time to volunteer, or want to make a donation — we would love to hear from you. Your involvement has real, visible impact in our community.
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