Invest in Community: Contribute to Herban Cura
If you are interested in making a contribution to this work, please do so below, or continue to read more about where we have come from, where we are going and how you can join us.
Invitation: Building Networks of Collective Care
By redistributing resources that have historically been allocated inequitably through violence and systemic oppression, Herban Cura invites you to join us in building strong networks of community care. Through education, community, and herbs we can grow futures of deeper connection, liberation, and balance within our human to earth pathways.
Becoming a contributor means you get to support the multi-dimensional work of queer, BIPOC visionary ecological magic! Herban Cura is providing a platform for diverse cultures to exchange ancestral practices in earth stewardship—such as herbal medicine-making, cooking, and storytelling—together we can explore a wealth of opportunities for reintegrating nature into our lives and to help bring harmony to the relationships with ourselves, each other, and the earth. This is a precious opportunity to be a part of giving that gift to your communities and to the land.
Guiding Vision: Education, Relationship, Herbs
Our offerings trace the socio-political, ecological history of plants and people. By centering Indigenous, Black, Queer and Trans experiences, we uncover the ways that plants and people have been related to, colonized, or taken out of their original relationship over time.
Herban Cura creates access to ancestral wisdom both through the rematriation of indigenous life-ways and also through remembrance and reclamation of how to live in solidarity with the earth and our human and more-than-human kin.
We bridge the relationship between rural and urban spaces by increasing collective intimacy with plants that many of us interact with daily. Geared towards BIPOC communities who have faced systemic assaults on their rights to access land and maintain intergenerational wisdom, it is our focus to re-skill ourselves and each other in practices that allow us to be more autonomous.
Invest in Community: Contribute to Herban Cura
With generous contributions from one-time and sustaining donors, we will be able to exponentially grow our capacity to collaborate with knowledge keepers to offer workshops, free classes, deepening our relationships with the communities and collectives we are already working with, and increasing mutual aid and medicine distribution to communities in need.
This can only be possible with your financial support. Other allocations will include but are not limited to:
Investing in accessible and regional herbal education with teachers, elders, and international members
Supporting Plants to the People: a redistribution project of herbal medicine in NYC and in low income and frontline communities
Redistribute tinctures and other herbal medicine as mutual aid
Tending to the plants: building out and sustaining our garden and education spaces
Allow us to continue to curate and create programming online and in person
Provide scholarships for our virtual and in-person programming
*for every knowledge share and immersion we offer between 1-10 BIPOC and low income scholarshipsSupport free in-person community programming
Support the creation of our Living Library of virtual learning and the creation of beautiful documentation of our communities’ wisdom
Help us pay our team a living wage and compensate our facilitators with abundance
Website and digital maintenance
Admin support
English to Spanish interpretation for every knowledge share
Since 2017 Herban Cura has…
offered 250+ knowledge shares and immersions both in person and online
provided 500+ scholarships (equivalent to approx. $25,000)
redistributed 2,000 + bundles of fresh herbs with our Plants to the People project in NYC
supported in fundraising $300,000 for a Black land project
redistributed $12,000 of funds from knowledge shares towards Palestinian sovereignty, Indigenous mutual aid and bail-funds
led Mutual Aid herbal redistribution of 1500+ herbal remedies
Sent 600+ tinctures to the Mexico-US border in 2019
Sent 300+ tinctures to Native American reservations during COVID-19 in 2020
Sent 150+ tinctures to frontline Black Lives Matter activists in 2020
facilitated over 30 plant walks and plant based workshop in NYC
distributed our own 4 month Herbal CSA (community supported apothecary) in 2022 and 2023
hosted and curated 8 artist and farmer pop ups at Lil’ Deb’s Oasis
planted and tended to 6 herbal gardens
been in collaboration with Spanish-speaking immigrant communities, youth communities, and formerly incarcerated communities
Since 2017, we have offered over 200 knowledge shares and immersions that have included topics ranging from herbal medicine making, plant identification walks in New York City, knowledge shares on food preservation, cosmology, plant and animal stories, tracing and restoring relationship to plants that have been exploited and distorted by colonization, mushroom immersions, plant dye workshops and more. Our knowledge shares have brought participants from all 50 states and from over 80 countries around the world. Through our offerings, Herban Cura has connected our city communities with land projects in upstate New York, as well as facilitated international relationships between teachers, students, and those exploring their relationship to plants for the first time.
What is coming next?
We are working towards models where we can mutually support one another. We hope that these models will grow into strong relationships that can support younger and future generations in having the food and skills needed to thrive. In 2023, our dream is to:
Announce our Living Library of virtual learning: an online school where we house many of the recorded knowledge shares from the past few years for folks to access through a subscription base
Create short films that document and explore the knowledge of our community members and teachers
Create more zines and bound publications of our own recipes and community submissions on the plants and skills that we are collectively exploring
Have a studio and apothecary space where we can make our herbal remedies and plant dyes and host folks to have in-person conversations in colder months
Continue distributing our Herbal CSA
Continue in person events and free programming in New York City for low income & BIPOC communities
Partner with immigrant communities both upstate New York and in New York City to offer access to herbal medicine as well as uplift and empower their plant wisdom
Continue our work with Plants to the People redistributing fresh herbal plants to low income immigrant communities in New York City
In the next 3 years, our goal is to have land where we are tending to fruit trees, chestnuts, berries and medicinal herbs. We see this land as a healing and learning space to serve formerly incarcerated folks as well as a space to offer in connecting with the immigrant communities around us, to grow culturally relevant herbs and foods, to learn and exchange stories and seeds
Why Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Contributions?
This work requires sustained support. We appreciate and value all one-time contributions, but it is the monthly, quarterly and annual contributions that we see as being vital and integral to the long-term health and success of this community education platform. Will you join us?
What People Are Saying
“Thank you so much for what you are offering in the community. I really appreciate you making these educational webinars available for all of us.”
“I felt in this space a depth of respect and honor for *all* of our relations. Human, plant, and the interconnected complexities of time, history, biology, and emotion (life itself).”
“Creating spaces where we can reclaim and reframe our past has us actively building a future of more dignity and respect for ourselves, our ancestors and for our future…”
“Y'all are doing such impactful work with such integrity and it's such a service to everyone who gets to experience it, I feel really lucky to be able to participate and learn from the amazing teachers you bring together.”
