about wild ginger
our family business |
our community |
Welcome to Wild Ginger Community Herbal Center, we are so thankful you are here! We are Molly and Javier and Wild Ginger is our small family run business which began over 10 years ago. Wild Ginger is both our business and is also a community. Most simply, we hope to be a space where folks can come to learn, to feel joy, to dig in, to grow, to feel enlivened, nourished, and enriched.
We currently work in Maryland as well as offer online classes. Wild Ginger is co-owned by Molly, a white cis-woman, and her partner Javier, a Black and Latinx/e cis-man. Molly is the central organizer managing programming, communication, and logistics while also teaching, gardening and herbal medicine making, while Javier’s roles include stewarding our land and gardens, hosting groups in Costa Rica, and transportation as well as nature programs in Costa Rica. These are the intersections of how we move through this work in our learning community. (What does cis-gender mean?)
From the outset, Wild Ginger began with the goal to better embody and better reflect the community of folks who practice herbalism in our communities. We have always been dedicated to help herbal, plant, land-based, healing and birthing knowledge stay alive and vital at the community level and we love working with folks rooted in our communities to bring these educational spaces alive!
Over the last decade + we have had the joy and the honor to work with hundreds of teachers to create programs and collective learning experiences. Together we utilize a wide variety of ways to share knowledge in hopes to weave a story of herbalism, healing, food and birth that reflects the many different lineages, traditions, cultures, values and identities that our community is made up of.
We believe through our work we are laying down the foundations for the future we wish to create, together, and this is exciting! Our goal is to keep our classes inspiring, useful, affordable & accessible while honoring the time, energy, and knowledge our teachers come to share. We celebrate folk knowledge and nature's wisdom while providing supportive and practical knowledge. Our core teacher network has been built relationship by relationship, we have slowly connected as a constellation over many years - and we continue to grow over time. It is important to note, especially during this transformative time, that the majority of those who lead classes with us are not trained facilitators rather are community based herbalists and educators.
Important Information About Wild Ginger Classes
General:
- Most of our classes are in English or will provide English translation.
- The vast majority are open to all - however if there is a class created with the intention for a specific part of our community or is not open for general registration, that will always be defined in class info.
- You can expect a wide variety of participants in our courses that hold different strengths, experiences, perspectives, cosmologies, values and worldviews. We are an intergenerational community, among us we hold many different identities, faiths, cultures, abilities, ethnicities, races, genders, languages and more.
- For those looking for a highly interactive, participatory and community building space we suggest attending our live in- person classes instead of our online classes.
- We care deeply about justice. It is our goal to embody this throughout our programming, and we want to be up front. We are not an exclusively radical activist space, we welcome folks from and beyond movement spaces.
- We invest in our teacher and provide ongoing capacity building and training - we all do this work together and value bringing each other along.
-Class Structures:
- Each class is carefully crafted with intention for the specific course needs as well as our capacity.
- Some courses, especially our in-person courses, while topic and content oriented will also have much space for participation, co-creation, and cross pollination!
- Many of our online courses are as low-barrier financially as possible, which means they have many attendees. A few of our online offerings will incorporate this style as well, however some are pre-recorded, some are webinar/lecture style, etc. Each course is different and it will be important for you to check that our offering is in line with your needs.
- Some of our larger online courses folks can expect more of a focus on the class topics and more of a lecture/presentation/webinar style rather than participatory and community interaction. We will utilize online tools that we hope can help illuminate the richness of our collective experience, wisdom, creation, and transformation when possible. We do not offer online forum spaces during our online classes.
At Wild Ginger we are a small team, we hold many solutions, we also hold the needs of many people, and it is with much care we try to balance varying needs and values with our capacity. Details will be specifically defined for each course, so please read thoroughly so your expectations are in-line with our offerings and capacity which have been carefully crafted with intention.
We are committed to craft and hold the containers of our classes as responsibly as possible, to live and embody our values, and we see this as an active process. We are very open and thankful to those who take the time, energy and effort to contact us directly with the gift of feedback, express needs, or to let us know when conflict or harm arises, as well as to help bring us along in the spirit of community. Please know we are always here and at any time you would like you can contact us at wildgingerherbalcenter@gmail.com
Wild Ginger Community Herbal Center programs are a reflection of and supported by our community,
and so it is with true gratitude we thank you for your interest and support. We look forward to building with you!