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HERBALISTS WITHOUT BORDERS
CREATING HEALTH THROUGH SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGE | |
photos courtesty of Steven Foster Group |
Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around. -- Thoreau
- To recover and revitalize the role of herbal medicine in public health.
- To promote ethical and compassionate intercultural exchange of ideas, resources, and volunteer services.
- To develop and promote equitable and sustainable trade relationships that are democratically conducted, ecologically sound, economically viable, and that support healthy communities.
- To enhance and engage human understanding and creativity regarding the many and diverse roles of plants in ecological restoration and cultural survival
Herbalists Without Borders is a democratic organization. We believe strongly that these times demand an end to war, and that true, informed, participatory democratic process is the only means to achieve that desperately needed end. Join Our Democratic Process to Help Transform Our Trade Relationships
Herbalists Without Borders
975 Treaster Kettle Road
Centre Hall, PA 16828 USA
Herbalists Without Borders is dedicated to promoting the use of herbal medicine for healing individuals and society. We strongly advocate changing the nature of commerce in botanical products in ways that encourage greater local and regional self-reliance, in communities around the world. Recognizing that a majority of people in the world today live in poverty and do not have access to conventional medical care, we are particularly interested in how information and access to plant medicines can be made more broadly available.
Herbalists Without Borders in no way condones the practice of medicine without a license. We obey the law and do not support or condone breaking it. In areas of the world where people are too remote or too poor to have access to medical services, options are very often limited to self care or no care. This is the underserved population most in need, and these are the people we hope to see as our equals, as human beings with dignity and hope, in working together to solve the problems of global and environmental changes. We work to help people learn about herbal medicine, to relearn and reclaim knowledge about their own local traditional medicine, to engage in conservation planning and community education, and to improve their economic status through greater regional self-sufficiency and local self-reliance. As non-farmers, those of us who depend on farmers for our food and so much more, represented in a vast array of farmed and traded products, work to change the way we trade with farmers. Our Farmers First CSA is open to members of Herbalists Without Borders. Please write to us for membership guidelines. We respect religious freedom, but we are not a religious group. We are not affiliated with any political party and we do not engage in lobbying efforts or endorse political candidates. We are a nonprofit group. We do not promote products or companies or celebrities. Please do not ask us to do so.
HWB work falls into 7 PROGRAM AREAS:
- Clinical Services. This entails generating financial donations and gifts of supplies and equipment, arranging for logistics of delivering them, hosting educational service tours to link people with volunteer opportunities that match their skill levels, as well as establishing partnerships that support specific clinics.
- Fair Botanical Trade. HWB works with communities and village-based small farmer co-ops to develop exchanges that support healthy communities producing fairly traded and organically certified products. We work to help facilitate long-term market relationships that foster dignity, small farmer autonomy, mutual respect, and caring for the Earth. In these times of greater uncertainty over the wisdom of shipping mass-produced commercial items long distances, HWB is concerned primarily with building and strengthening local and domestic markets for local and domestic exchange.
- Education. HWB designs and offers courses for professionals, herbal medicine and botany students, as well as farmer-to-farmer and village-based educational courses.
- Botanical Gardens and Seed Banks. HWB is committed to the conservation of local biodiversity and traditional knowledge as well as providing contexts for local control of local resources.
- Publications. HWB aims to support publication of books and articles that help promote and preserve herbal traditions, especially village-friendly publications in appropriate local languages. Our biannual publication Herbal Sojournal is available for $6 per issue or as part of the membership benefits when you join HWB.
- Phytoremediation. HWB programs help create village-based water treatment systems that use plants for purifying local drinking water.
- Reforestation and Restoration Ecology. HWB recognizes that forests (and deserts, native prairies, marshes, and other natural habitat systems) are living medicine chests which are vital to local communities around the world in innumerable ways. We encourage reforestation and restoration ecology (precautionary principle in play) in all areas of the world and support local, village-based forest stewardship and tree planting programs wherever possible.
Herbalists Without Borders acts as a central clearinghouse and networking agency to link volunteers with village-based programs and to link village-based programs with resources and other support. Some urban and university-based programs are also underway.
Join Herbalists Without Borders
NATURALISTAS SIN FRONTERAS es una organización no lucrativa dedicada a la promoción y la entrega de servicios médicos apropiados, económicos, seguros, y eficaces. Trabajamos con médicos licenciados y naturalistas tradicionales en los países en vias de desarrollo para brindar servicios de salud a comunidades con serias necesidades. Por medio de viajes de servicio y brigades de salud, actividades educativas, publicaciones, establecemiento de jardines botánicos, y el desarrollo de enlaces a mercados para plantas medicinales y productos naturales, bajo los principios de respeto mutuo, compasión, y comercio justo, aspiramos a construir un mundo más sano y menos pobre material y espiritualmente.
Haga clique aquí para ver Programas en Países Latinoamericanos:
Herbalists Without Borders
975 Treaster Kettle Road
Centre Hall, Pennsylvania 16828 USA
info@herbalistswithoutborders.org
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