Stewards of Solidarity Collective is a community of Black herbalists in Philadelphia growing, making, distributing, and teaching about Indigenous African, Soulaan (descendants of enslaved Africans in the United States), and African Diasporic plant medicine from “seed to mouth” to care practitioners and land workers. We are plant conjurers who build brave spaces, freely exchange peer knowledge, and fortify holistic wellness and freedom practices. Based on community feedback on what ailments are most prevalent, we create free medicines such as teas, bath salts, oxymels, tinctures, and syrups. 

Our people are Black healers, care practitioners, and growers living and working on Lenape land (Philadelphia.) Folks who are always pouring their cup for others, but also need wellness practices for themselves. They are:

• Mothers/Fathers/Parents/Grandparents

• Big sisters/brothers/siblings/cousins

• Farmers and Gardeners

• Herbalists

• Rootworkers

• Spiritual Guides/Priests/Preachers

• Teachers

• Cultural curators/Artists

• Nurses/Social Workers

• Birth workers/midwives/Doulas

They represent across income levels, age, and gender. However, we acknowledge that often Black women and femmes take on the role of “care work.” Through patriarchal systems and pressured societal norms, “care” has become a feminized occupation. We honor and uplift them. Overall, care practitioners can encompass any gender and are often unseen, unacknowledged, and not given space to tend to their full selves. The Western Medical Industrial complex and centuries of chattel slavery-sharecropping-prison labor would have us believe that it's our fault for internalizing stress, trauma, and harm that manifest in cancers, auto-immune disorders, and other diseases. We hope to disrupt this and provide space for care workers of the African Diaspora to bear witness, take a breath, lean into joy, and tend to self through herbal-based remedies that can support, uplift, and revolutionize how they live and thrive.

While our distributed medicines will be exclusively for Black people in Philadelphia, our public workshops and herbalist gatherings will be for all people who connect with care work, land justice, plant medicine, liberation, and holistic well-being. 

We have a combined 20 years of collective wisdom in herbalism, plant medicine, urban agriculture, farming, and spiritual/ancestral land veneration. We honor our teachers, past and present, who have provided an abundance of knowledge and guidance in our journey:

• Kelly McCarthy from Attic Apothecary

• Maebh Aguilar, Mercelyne Latortue, and Dominique Matti from Bartram's Build Your Home Apothecary Class

• Amanda David + People's Medicine School

• Lady Danni

• Des from Philly Herb Hub

• Ms. Lisa, Pearl Street Community Leader 

We are thankful for the numerous organizations and people who have helped propel this project, either through donations, grants, volunteering, or in-kind support.

• Pennsylvania Interfaith Power & Light

• The National Black Food & Justice Alliance (NBFJA)

• People’s Climate Innovation Center

• Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance

• Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram's Garden

• Nate Kleinman from Experimental Farm Network

• Bluestem Botanicals

• Lancaster Farmacy

• Hannah Jo King