Mentorship
New in 2024! - Introducing our Herbalist Mentorship Community Program!
Are you a budding, community-oriented herbalist who is looking to join a like-minded cohort in the 2024 growing season to collectively build wellness sovereignty for your broader community through justice action, land and plant stewardship, seasonal celebration and access to high-quality herbal medicine, knowledge and skills?
Are you ready to build your confidence as an herbalism educator or activist with the support of mentors and a community of fellow herbalists?
Are you longing to build equitable community herbal partnerships, steward herb gardens, and honorably harvest/wildcraft abundant plant material for both the community and your home apothecary?
Are you hoping to build upon your connection to the plants and plant-loving humans in reverence, joy, seasonal celebration, and shared intention?
About this program?
Take your herbalism from the homestead to the community scale with mentorship, individual coaching, and a cohort work/service model that meets once monthly from March through October on Sunday afternoons.
As an educational nonprofit organization in our 10th year, it is our mission to share joyful, hands-on education and wellness through plant medicine while honoring all our herbal traditions. We foster community action to enhance equitable access to the abundance of seasonal, local plant medicine, to build resilience, and to promote the practice of the honorable harvest. Herbalism can also be a movement to combat oppression and dispossession and to heal the fragmentation and unworthiness created by centuries of settler colonialism and capitalism on this earth- we strive to practice herbal medicine through this lens everyday.
Who should apply?
We are inviting Spoonful Herbals Apprenticeship Alumni and other herbalists with some introductory training and basic skills to be mentored and inspired within our established non-profit organization and web of community and land partners.
This Mentorship program is for those looking to expand their herbalism, teaching and service at the community level. It is NOT a program for beginning herbalists, nor is it a clinical training program or designed to prepare you to manufacture herbal products at a large scale, though participants may be referred to or choose to seek additional training in these areas. It is also NOT a remote program; participants will attend in-person gatherings in Burlington VT (unceded Abenaki territory), and our community partners are primarily in the great Burlington area.
Spoonful Herbals hopes to engage graduates of this program in continued partnership with us in consecutive years to help spread activism, education, skills and community building more widely in our local community and to help support our popular Apprenticeship program.
Who are the mentors?
This class will be taught collaboratively by Spoonful Herbals co-directors Katherine Elmer and Kara Buchanan. They share a deep love and reverence for the plants and the wild and not-so-wild places they live, and for the amazing resilience and innate knowledge of the human body. They find great joy in sharing their knowledge of the plants and their herbal creations with community near and far.
Both directors identify as cis, femme, white settlers, and are predominantly trained in the Western herbal tradition. They are committed to diversifying the perspectives in this program, and do so through readings, guest speakers and ongoing critical examination of their own biases. Our programming is open and inclusive to all aspiring herbalists. We recognize that the lens of our teachings come through our celtic, white settler ancestors and (critically) Eurocentric herbalism training, and that we are occupying and harvesting on stolen Abenaki land, therefore we practice principles of the honorable harvest, assign learning materials from Queer and BIPOC authors, and invite guest educators to our gatherings in an imperfect attempt to offer a variety of perspectives.
Participants Receive:
Membership in 8 Monthly Group Classes in a cohort learning/mentorship model March through October on Sunday afternoons; our curriculum will be largely emergent, based on needs and interests of the group, topics may include:
Best Practices for Teaching Community Herbalism, Wellness Basics for Sustainable Activism (and Activists), Herbal Justice Ethics and Standards, Anti-Racism and Uncolonizing Western Herbalism, Community Organizing, Social Entrepreneurship and Business Development, Spiritual Practices to Support Aligned Community Action (with herbs!), Herbal Medicine-making for donation, etc.
Individual Coaching in goal setting and planning for your unique community herbalism offering(s) and skill development- 3 sessions
Seasonal enrollment in our Community Gleaning and Wildcrafting Guild (a $150 value)
Assistant teaching roles with directors in community classes and workshops, offering experience and training as community leaders and educators. As space allows, mentees can also attend these classes as participants, free of charge.
Additional Benefits:
Attendance at Spoonful classes and programs (including attending classes with our community partners at no charge as teaching assistants).
Exposure to our robust community partnerships and networks.
Connections with these community partners to manifest and experience leading at least one community course, event or service project.
Encouragement and support to schedule cohort meetings between monthly group classes. (like discussion groups, seasonal celebrations, potluck events, group medicine making, crafting, field trips, etc.)
Medicinal plant material from garden harvests, gleaning from partner farms, and wild crafting from our network of green spaces for honorable harvest.
Medicinal garden plants and seedlings.
Colleagues in community healing & transformation!
Expectations of Participants:
Assist in teaching classes with Spoonful directors or staff
Participate in community herbalism service hours per month, determined in collaboration with program mentors. Some of these hours may be completed directly with Spoonful Herbals while others will be with organizations or projects that participants identify over the course of their program.
Teach or co-teach a minimum of 1 self-produced community course (or organize/lead a service project or event) in Fall 24 or during 2025. This is in addition to attending or assisting classes with Spoonful Herbals. Support for identifying teaching venues or project partners is included in the program.
Participants will be helping to support Spoonful Herbals garden stewardship, plant harvesting, processing, medicine making mission, and CSA program.
2024 Program Details
Application
Applications for the 2024 Herbalism Mentorship Community Program have closed.
There is a $50 application fee (non-refundable and applied towards total tuition after acceptance)
Applications are accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis. After submitting your application and $50 fee HERE, you will be invited to schedule an interview with the program facilitators.
Tuition
The cost of the program is $800.
(Upon acceptance, a $200 non-refundable deposit will be required to secure your place in the program.)
Tuition is waived for 2 interns!
(Apply separately for this internship online by February 8th)
The remaining balance of the tuition ($550) is due BEFORE the first day of the apprenticeship unless you request to work out another payment plan with us IN ADVANCE.
(Payment plans available upon request!)
Financial assistance is available for eligible students while funds last through VSAC’s Vermont Non-Degree Grant. Apply early as funds are first-come first served and often run out by February or March. You do not need to be accepted into our program before applying for VSAC assistance.
Schedule
We will meet monthly, from March to October on the following Sunday afternoons from 1:00 - 5:00 pm:
3/24, 4/21, 5/19, 6/23, 7/28, 8/18, 9/22, 10/27
Participants will teach or co-teach at least 1 community class (or organize/lead a service project).
Total program hours: a minimum of 70 hours with opportunity and support for more.
Please feel free to email us with further questions.
