Recipes & Rituals for Community Care: Herbs for Mutual Aid

In this hands-on workshop, we’ll dive into the practice of direct mutual aid with herbs. Together, we will process, package, and label herbs that will be distributed in solidarity with migrant communities. As we work, we’ll explore the role of herbalism in nurturing systems of care, learn what mutual aid is and can look like, and imagine the kinds of worlds we’d like to live in—ones that center care, reciprocity, and collective flourishing.

🌱 Process, package, and label herbs for mutual aid distribution
🌿 Learn about herbalism as a tool for care and resilience
🤝 Explore the meaning and practice of mutual aid in community
✨ Dream together about future systems rooted in care for all

Your Facilitator: Jasmín Duran

Nestled in the intersections of decolonization, immigration, youth work, healing justice, land and herbalism, Jasmín’s work seeks to uplift, celebrate and preserve the legacy of ancestral healing, wisdom, and technologies in the diaspora. As a child of immigrants, Jasmín embodies a deep understanding of the challenges and joys of the migrant experience in the US.

Jasmín has a B.A. in International Relations & Food Studies from Syracuse University (2015). In 2020, she completed a Spiritual Herbalism Apprenticeship under the guidance of Master Herbalist Karen Rose at Sacred Vibes Apothecary in Brooklyn, NY. She has worked extensively at local community gardens and in organic farm projects abroad. As an educator, her work is participatory, culturally aware, youth centered and trauma informed. Today, she continues to support youth in NYC, working in an anti-violence organization where she co-creates brave spaces with young people to unpack, question, dream and decolonize.

Join us for Recipes and Rituals for Collective Care every Wednesday!

What does it mean to heal in community? What does it feel like when we extend care to ourselves and the collective? How do plants and our local ecologies care for us? How can we care for the plants and local ecologies in return?

Weave in rituals and recipes into your own self-care and community care practices through weekly explorations in herbal arts, somatic movement in the greenhouse and garden, folk remedies, and other wild-crafts and meditative activities that foster a deeper connection to plants to care for the body, mental health, and the people you move with.

Each week, be guided by a guest herbalist, healing artist, or wellness practitioner who will help you create your own toolkit and apothecary for self and communal care.

Workshops are rain or shine.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.