First Curve's Community Apothecary is a community outreach program that utilizes circular economy practices to connect with urban foragers, local urban farms, and community gardens within Chicago.

Collaborating with these plant folx allows us to share in the abundance of wild and weedy medicinal plants, which we tend, harvest, process, extract, and offer back to the community as herbal remedies at an accessible and sliding-scale price.

The Community Apothecary also offers students of our Greenspell Bioregional Herbalism Intensive the opportunity for plant connection and community engagement. Through the community apothecary students are able to connect with plants throughout their growth cycle, learning to harvest, process, extract for medicine, formulate, blend, bottle, and eventually guide community members as to which herbal remedies will best support them. This gives students the opportunity to learn about the practice of bioregional herbalism through each step of the process, and to empower community members to engage with herbal healing within their own communities in their own way, and in relationship with the plants around them.

To facilitate this learning and outreach, we hold community apothecary pop-ups at least once a year. These pop-ups further support our efforts to provide more accessible herbal remedies and education for our community, empowering community members to engage with herbal medicines to support their health and cultivate preventative self-care. They are entirely non-profit and donation-based. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Finally the Community Apothecary supports and subsidizes our Herbal Free Clinic which provides no-fee consultations and a discount on herbal teas and tinctures for individuals who may not be able to afford the full price of a private consultation.

More info here: https://firstcurveapothecary.com/pages/community-apothecary