Perfect Partners: Acupuncturists Without Borders & Mayway
The year 2022 has been very busy for Acupuncturists Without Borders (AWB), and Mayway has helped make it a successful one! We are so appreciative! While AWB focused on providing community auricular acupuncture in disaster and conflict areas for many years, we have added new modalities to our trauma-informed toolkit: Herbal medicine, massage therapy, aromatherapy, and Somatic Touch are but a few of the therapies used by AWB, especially in our ongoing, long-term programs. We’ve also developed new online and in-person training to better
equip practitioners working with vulnerable and trauma-impacted communities. In fact, Mayway will be hosting the IN-PERSON AWB trauma-informed care certificate program, Repairing the Shattered Heart, starting in March 2023. Again, we are so grateful for Mayway’s steadfast support of AWB’s work in the US and around the world.
Here's a recap of AWB’s activities in 2022:
- Trained over 600 integrative practitioners worldwide.
- Provided more than 250,000 treatments worldwide.
- Organized refugee support clinics in nine countries as a result of the war in Ukraine: UK, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Romania, and Greece.
- Supported community acupuncture clinics for first responders, veterans and military families, refugees, and houseless communities throughout the US.
- Provided care to California farmworkers - in many cases the only medical care they received.
- Continued collaborating with midwives to provide care for displaced people at the US/Mexico border.
- Provided care in Puerto Rico to those affected by Hurricanes Maria and Fiona.
- Continued supporting Haitian communities as they experience heightened social unrest and political violence.
- Partnered with AWB Greece to support African, Syrian, Afghan and now, Ukrainian refugees.
- Continued our Medicine of Peace work in Israel and Palestine.
- Organized hurricane relief clinics in Florida.
AWB will continue coordinating and supporting these programs in 2023, and add new ones as more practitioners emerge from pandemic limitations to bring trauma-informed care to their communities. We hope to integrate herbal medicine into our ongoing farmworker clinics in California, as well as in the EU, particularly Poland, where over 3,000,000 refugees continue to shelter from the war in Ukraine.
We have had great success with offering herbal support at the Justica en Salud clinic in Tijuana, Mexico where we work with the Parteras midwives to provide reproductive health care to asylum seekers and refugees. Mayway has been a superb partner to help make this happen.
As 2022 comes to an end, we hope that you will support AWB’s work around the world, and that you will continue to rely on Mayway to bring the best herbal medicine products to your patients and communities! For more information on AWB’s programs, ways to help, and trauma-informed care training courses, visit the AWB website at www.acuwithoutborders.org.
Thank you Mayway - for your community partnership, generosity, and commitment to bringing Asian herbal medicine to so many people in need around the world. ~Carla Cassler, AWB
Carla Cassler has practiced acupuncture and Chinese medicine in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 35 years, specializing in women’s health, pediatric, orthopedic and trauma treatment. Her interest in trauma treatment began in l992 when she practiced acupuncture on an Israeli kibbutz, where many of her patients suffered from physical and mental health problems related to multiple wars and the Holocaust. For the past 10 years she has worked with Acupuncturists Without Borders, developing and coordinating trauma-healing programs in the US, Israel, Palestine, Puerto Rico, Greece and Mexico. She is part of the AWB leadership team and helps develop training courses to educate acupuncturists about trauma and trauma-informed care.
