How Forge came to be
Forge grew out of a straightforward, frustrating observation. In 2019, a small group of young Galashiels residents — some studying at Heriot-Watt's Borders campus, others working locally in retail and the trades — noticed that when friends struggled with anxiety or low mood, the journey to finding help was bewildering. NHS waiting lists were long, the language clinical and alienating, and the nearest city more than forty minutes away.
They began meeting informally in a community café to talk about it, and those early conversations quickly showed there was an appetite for something more structured and more honest. With support from a local GP and a mental health nurse who believed the idea could work, the group registered as a SCIO and held their first formal peer workshop in spring 2020.
The name Forge felt right from the beginning: it speaks to Galashiels' textile and mill heritage, and to the idea that something strong and useful can be shaped through sustained, honest, unglamorous work.
In the years since, Forge has grown — deliberately and carefully, because quality of connection matters to us more than scale. We have trained more than a dozen peer facilitators, developed a referral relationship with NHS Borders, and expanded from a single monthly session to a rolling programme of themed workshops and open drop-ins.
Every development has been guided by feedback from the young people who attend, and that participatory instinct remains central to how we make decisions. Forge is not handed down from above. It is built, continuously and imperfectly, by the community it serves.
