Herbal Mutual Aid Network

We are a peer-to-peer mutual care Network of herbalists, educators, farmers, artists, care workers, organizers, donors and care recipients.

As we create resources for those struggling to access care, we center the needs of people of color, trans, queer and disabled people.

In distribution, we partner with POC-led community organizations to support the work they've already been doing in the communities they've built.

We are a fiscally sponsored grassroots organization, funded by tax-free donations.

"Wellness" is a $4.2 trillion industry and it’s not designed to get care to the people who need it most.

We believe...

✿ In the face of systemic oppression, equity should be an essential pillar of any business or practice providing care. “Wellness” without equity is hoarding resources.

✿ Working together as a collective, we can channel our creativity toward building mutual networks of care—connecting people with the resources they need right now. 

 

Our mission is to sustain a mutual care ecosystem that centers the needs of marginalized people 

by:

✿ Hiring and promoting the work of marginalized artists and care workers, enabling peer-to-peer care at no cost to those needing support

✿ Building a dimensional platform for conversation around care and healing, centering marginalized voices

✿ Listening to the communities we serve and adapting our structure and offerings as needs shift over time

✿ Maintaining an energetically sustainable operating structure that centers the needs of our collaborators—avoiding burnout + maximizing joy—with the guiding objective of doing the most with the least. Impact over effort. Continually seeking ways to build mutuality + interdependence into our work, we will grow the scale our efforts while cultivating ease.

➛ Filling our "Free Shop" with herbal formulas, classes and other care resources, to be made accessible to our entire community of individual care recipients

➛ Creating and distributing our “Free Brand” of herbal formulas—designed in collaboration with herbalists whose identities reflect the communities we serve. 

➛ Commissioning Black artists for design and other creative work related to our initiatives.

➛ Building an Herbal Mutual Aid Garden where we will grow herbs for our free in-house formulas, to donate and to sell as a means of fundraising in partnership with Gentle Time Farm—a trans led cooperatively owned vegetable farm local to our studio in the Mahicantuck Valley of Upstate NY 

➛ Supporting existing Black and Indigenous led community organizations (local to Hudson and coast-to-coast) by providing herbal formulas, bulk herbs and educational resources to share with the communities they've already been building.

➛ Developing free in-person peer-to-peer education + free herbal pick-up days for low income community members local to our Studio in Hudson, NY

➛ Developing a medicine making residency where herbalists from the communities we serve can formulate with plants from our Mutual Aid Garden in our sanitary commercial herb processing Studio in Hudson, NY at no cost. 

Future projects include:

➛Creating a live online database network of herb growers + mutual aid groups organized by local region, where we can all stay connected on current projects + asks–a tool for seeking care *and* collaborating on all of our herbal mutual aid initiatives, coast-to-coast



 
H.M.A.N. was founded on May 30th, 2020 in the heat of the uprising in response to George Floyd's murder and an ongoing crisis of racial violence + injustice.