Our Mission
Our mission is to create a platform to educate and connect Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) herbalists and ecologically-based North American farmers to ensure access to strong, sustainable, locally grown Asian medicinal herbs and to support the conservation of these venerated Asian botanicals.
Our Vision
We imagine a future where potent Asian medicinal herbs are sustainably produced and available across North America via collaborative supply chains that benefit the health of patients, farmers and the planet.
Diversity and Inclusion Statement
Lilium Initiative is dedicated to creating an inclusive space which fosters a culture that actively engages people of all backgrounds regardless of their gender, race, ethnicity, national origin, age, beliefs, sexual orientation, education, ability, citizenship or socioeconomic status. We believe that any endeavor is more effective when a greater diversity of voices, knowledge systems, and experiences work together.
We honor the East Asian roots of both Chinese Herbal Medicine and the seeds and plants themselves. We aspire to respect the origins of this tradition by maintaining continuity in the values and methods used in Asia, while acting as a bridge and a resource for Asian-American communities to reconnect to and reclaim this ancestral heritage.
Our work is centered in the United States where the legacy of slavery, genocide, and oppression of those labeled “other” continues to operate as the driving force in the production of wealth, safety and power and thus has bestowed benefit mainly to white Americans. Farming in the US has a sordid history of hundreds of years of forced labor, stolen bodies and land, broken treaties, policies that prevent landownership for people of color and abusive working conditions for migrant farmers. With knowledge of this history, we commit to working for a new era in which all farmers are respected, can make a living wage, and flourish while maintaining the integrity of the Earth by preserving and cherishing her resources.
We are committed to continually work to uproot our conditioned biases in order to create an organization where respect for people of all backgrounds is not only a value but a consistent guide for our actions and decisions.