Not at all, if you don’t have previous experience you’ve come to the right place. If you do, Collective Wonder Herb School offers you an opportunity to keep learning and improving while also expanding your herbal community. Both of our programs aim to nurture learners starting at the very beginning as well as those who have a few years of experience.
If you are at the very beginning of your herbal path, you live in Portugal, and you are interested in both of our programs, we recommend enrolling in Wild Medicine Making before enrolling in the Community Herbal Foundations.
We’re working towards securing funding for a scholarship program and annual work-trade positions. At the same time, CWHS is a small business with annual budgetary needs. We try to find a balance between these two financial realities by offering payment plans, and discounted rates for early bird enrollment, and work-trade positions. It is crucial to us that this information and these experiences are accessible to anyone and everyone who is dedicated to studying herbalism. Luckily there are many free herbal resources out there in the world and we are happy to share some of those with you if you like.
If you’re interested in knowing more about our payment plans check out the CWHS Policy & Agreements for the Online Community Herbal Foundations or the Policy & Agreements for the Wild Medicine Making Program.
If you have the means, time, and commitment – we encourage you to take both courses together since they complement each other in various ways.
If you’re starting now and feel you learn best from hands-on environments, we recommend you enroll in Wild Medicine Making. We find that learners who start with Wild Medicine Making and then engage in Community Herbal Foundations, have better success.
If you’ve already had some hands-on experience with plants, through homesteading, farming, or other classes – but want to dig deeper and spend more time studying and building your own foundational knowledge for a lifelong study of herbalism then we encourage you to enroll in our Community Herbal Foundations course.
Unfortunately, no. We understand that this may be a disappointment to some, but our programs are designed and budgeted for a high level of commitment.
Wild Medicine Making is just as much about teaching the skills of plant identification and medicine-making as it is about maintaining a Collective energy. If people are only coming to a few of the classes, it disrupts the group energy and therefore we ask that everyone who enrolls is able to commit to attending each class. In addition, the program has a limited number of spaces and the budget does not have any buffer, so we need exactly the amount that is charged to meet the financial requirements of the program.
Of course, as long as you’re living in Portugal we encourage you to join us! Most of our participants come from the Lisbon area and once you’re in the course we’ll facilitate carpooling among the various students so that you can meet us from anywhere you are. Please just make sure you take into account the extra travel expenses before committing.
The main language for this course is English since it is the idiom most accessible to everyone involved since a lot of different nationalities make the Wild Medicine Making program. Nevertheless, there is always someone who speaks Portuguese among the team/other students who can facilitate some translation if necessary. Portuguese common names are given for all the plants we discuss in the course.
