Help Migrants Access Mental Health Services

Dear Friends,

For the past year and a half, the CARE collaborative has worked closely with the Center for Farmworker Families to provide mobile wellness clinics in Watsonville, CA. Our approach is integrative and trauma-informed, including acupuncture, chiropractic care, therapeutic massage, herbal indigenous medicine, and other traditional, culturally aligned therapies that address the physical and emotional health needs of migrant workers. CARE services are free of charge, and are provided in Spanish and English by licensed health professionals in community settings where farm workers live and work.

Farm worker communities in California continued to work throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, helping maintain food security for all Americans by producing over half the nation’s vegetables and two-thirds of our fruit and nuts. They have been disproportionately affected by wildfires, high COVID infection rates, harsh living/work conditions, pesticide poisoning, fear of deportation, and inadequate access to quality medical and mental health care. They often experience physical pain related to their jobs, and suffer high rates of trauma-related conditions such as anxiety and depression. Undocumented farm workers face even greater physical and mental health risks due to their migratory status.

This unique, trauma-informed, integrative health care project helps mitigate pain, stress, and trauma; builds greater physical and emotional resilience; and provides essential physical and mental health scaffolding for vulnerable migrant workers. We hope to expand this model program throughout California in the coming year.

Please consider continuing to support this program by becoming a recurring donor today! 

Thank you,

The CARE Team

Dear Friend,

It’s been quite a summer at AWB. So far, we’ve provided over 300.000 treatments for refugees, asylum seekers and migrating people around the world this year. Our goal is to provide 700.000 more in the second half of 2022!

March brought the war in Ukraine, and with it, immense suffering, death and the displacement of over 12 million people. Many of you responded to AWB’s call for refugee support by raising funds, donating, offering to travel, and providing trauma-informed care to those in need. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your generosity and spirit of service!

When AWB works in disaster or conflict zones, we partner with local organizations who know their communities best. We offer direct service when there are few local practitioners, provide clinical and project-building training, gather resources to make sure local projects have what they need, and educate the public about the importance of trauma-informed care. This is why AWB is focusing on partnerships with our EU and UK colleagues in response to the Ukraine refugee crisis – because they can best provide ongoing treatments and build sustainable projects in the communities where most people have sought safe haven.

AWB’s refugee and migrant support work is international. For the past seven years, we have increasingly focused on supporting people displaced by war, violence, famine, poverty, social injustice, and climate change. We continue to work in Greece with refugees from the Middle East and Africa, in Mexico with migrating people from Haiti and Central America, and in the US with undocumented essential workers.

Organizing support for displaced people from the Ukraine war has been one of AWB’s biggest challenges. The conflict grinds on with no end in sight, conditions are volatile, and the logistics of offering support in multiple countries in a very short time have often limited our ability to respond.

Nonetheless, with your help, AWB has already created a strong network of committed EU-UK practitioners, provided them with clinical and project-organizing training, raised funds and supply donations, and is providing daily mentorship to build sustainable projects to assist refugees from Ukraine, the Middle East. and Africa. Since March, AWB has:

• Hosted online trainings for over 500 European and UK practitioners on how to use NADA, Battlefield Acupuncture, and scalp acupuncture for trauma-healing. We have collaborated with wonderful partners to provide these trainings, including the ETCMA, certified NADA trainers, Dr. Richard Niemtzow and Dr. Song Niemtzow, and the TCM Kongress (Germany). Recordings of these free trainings are available at www.acuwithoutborders (homepage).
• Organized field teams in Netherlands, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Poland, Rumania, Sweden, Norway, Greece and Germany to provide direct trauma-informed care (pop up and mobile clinics).
• Completed two in-depth, in-person trainings for EU-UK team leaders and other practitioners, one in Berlin and one in Athens (where AWB-Greece coordinated the training).
• Gathered and distributed thousands of needles, ASP needles, ear seeds, and other clinical supplies to our European colleagues, as well as getting supplies to medical acupuncturists inside Ukraine. Thank you to the folks at Lhasa OMS for their amazing ongoing donations! 
• Meanwhile, AWB projects in other parts of the world are active, and new projects, on pause due to Covid, are activating!
• Every week, AWB practitioners, in partnership with the Parteras midwives, provide direct care to Haitian and Central American migrating families at the Justica En Salud Clinic in Tijuana, Mexico.
• AWB practitioners provide weekly-monthly treatments for farmworkers in California, in collaboration with the Center for Farmworker Families, the Botanical Bus, Livity Rising, and the Integrative Healers Action Network.
• AWB Community Service Clinics offer treatments in communities such as Portland, OR, Washington DC, and San Diego, CA for refugees, veterans, and houseless communities.
• AWB Greece provides NADA treatment circles at the Melissa Network, a wonderful refugee support center in Athens, as well as daily integrative medical care at the Alma Center for Holistic Health.
• Online trainings and regular webinars (add link) on topics of professional interest are regular offerings developed by AWB staff and our partners.

Right now we need to rally as much support as we can to be able to respond to the demand for refugee and migrant services in all the locations we are currently actuve in. While we were able to make it through the pandemic, when so many other small nonprofits didn't, we have been stretched to meet the high demand for services. We need our community's support more than ever! Please consider becoming a monthly donor and/or sharing our project with your community. We cannot do this without you!

If you've gotten this far, thank you! Your love and support for this work is what keeps us going. We appreciate you and honor you in every treatment we provide! 

With immense gratitude,

The AWB Team