Apprenticeship

Though we are not currently running this program, we have left the page intact to demonstrate our approach to apprenticeships.

The Herbalista apprenticeship blends community healthcare and herbal education with passionate service,  and typically requires a 1 year commitment. There is no tuition fee for this program. 

Please note, this is NOT an academic herbal training program and applicants must already have a solid foundation in herbal medicine, including some medicine making, materia medica and the basics of western medical herbalism.  A familiarity with TCM, Ayurveda, or other traditional herbal modality that provides an understanding of energetics is also helpful.  If you don’t already have a valid first aid certification, you will need to schedule this training if accepted into our program.

As a community health initiative, Herbalista adapts our programming to the changing needs of our community.  This has never been more important than during this pandemic.  The schedule we have indicated below is what we are currently running, but we ask that all applicants be flexible and understand that details of the apprenticeship program can be subject to change! 

COVID Considerations: We follow a strict set of protocols to keep our team and patients safe!  This includes appropriate hygiene and safety standards, such as mask wearing, hand washing, and social distancing when possible.

General Herbalista Apprenticeship Schedule:

• Apprentices meet 1 day a week at Herbalista HQ.  Apprentices learn skills such as apothecary maintenance, medicine making, herb processing, and community clinic management.
• Once a month we offer an Edible + Medicinal Plant Ramble in a different city park.  The scheduling of these walks are weather and daylight dependent.  They can be during a weekday evening or a weekend afternoon, depending on the season.  These Rambles raise funds for the Free Clinic and are also a learning opportunity for apprentices!
• The last Thursday of each month is when we offer our free mobile clinic (i.e. Herb Bus, Herb Cart, etc.)   On this day the the apprentice hours are from 8:30AM-3PM.  
• Apprentices also have the option of working at our monthly pop-up HerbCare Station that Herbalista offers alongside the Atlanta Resistance Medics in Woodruff Park.
• Apprentices will also assist with other activities scattered throughout the year– such as with fundraisers, contributing to the Grow a Row Program (plant harvesting and processing work), our Seasonal Hydrosol Distillations (4 x’s per year) and occasional Solidarity Medicine Making Workshops.

Dedicating yourself to free community herbal healthcare is not an easy task! Basically, it’s not always a rose-scented-cauldron-stirring kinda situation.

The hours we spend in actual clinic are minor in comparison to all of the behind the scenes work we must do to keep a project like this going! There is bottle washing.  There is schlepping. There is paperwork.  There is medicine making.  There is kit and dispensary maintenance.  There is organizing… and reorganizing. There is scheduling.  There is fundraising.  And yes, there is laundry and dishes.

We are the underbelly of healthcare and we take on what others won’t or can’t.  We make the best of often shitty situations.  We navigate difficult personalities and bear witness to injustice at all levels of society.  We do a lot with a little and a little with next to nothing.  We make a difference… sometimes.  We are cultivating community day by day, planting seeds and pulling weeds (which we then turn into medicine, of course.)

We self-reflect.  We acknowledge our privilege and our trauma. We acknowledge those things in the world.  We meet people where they are at. We hold safe space.  We do our best and we make mistakes. We learn and we give it another shot.  We are works in progress.

Community herbalism inspires creativity and promotes agility.  It is empowering and humbling. It illuminates your mind, nurtures your capacity for love, but can also break your heart.  For me the important thing is that we are in this together.   We have each other and we have the plants.

We are lucky to be community herbalists indeed!

If you have passion for supporting and serving your neighbors (both people and plants), if you have a basic knowledge of herbal medicine, if you can dedicate the time to our mission, and you are ready to make a commitment to our crew, please apply!

Thank you for your commitment to building a more vital and verdant community through herbalism. Viva la Herb Bus!

~Lorna Mauney-Brodek, Herbalista Founder and Director

Though we are not currently running the apprenticeship program, you can click below to see an example of our application.