Mission Statement
The Alliance of Forest Workers and Harvesters is a multicultural organization promoting social, environmental, and economic justice.
We exist to:
• Share and provide information and education;
• Encourage participation in decision-making processes that affect our lives;
• Be mutually supportive and respectful of forest workers’ and harvesters’ cultures, communities, and individuals, and foster communication among all;
• Promote the understanding of each other’s struggles and issues throughout the Pacific West.


12 AFWH Strategies:
• Multicultural Multilingual Communication
• Membership Development and Services
• Community-based Organizing Projects
• Regional Participation
• Alliances and Partnerships
• Organizational Infrastructure
• Funding Proposals
• Collaborative Research and Education
• National-level Participation
• Workforce Training and Certification
• Ecosystem Stewardship and Restoration
• Economic Cooperation and Development


Why a forest workers/harvesters organization is so important:
• Bringing the multicultural forest workers and NTFP harvesters
together to discuss issues important to them.
• We are the only grassroots organization formed by the
workers/harvesters, the people whose hands touch the land,
in the nation.
• Forest worker/harvester empowerment
• Bringing the people who are actually affected by policy
changes made by others to speak and engage in those policy
discussions in order to provide real life experience and balance
from the ground up.
• Respecting Experiential Knowledge and Traditional Ecological
Knowledge and encouraging inclusion of this knowledge in
land management practices.
         • Cooperating, educating, implementing projects with
multicultural forest workers, NTFP harvesters, and
government agencies in public and private forests.
• Recognizing and encouraging leadership in multicultural
NTFP harvester and forest worker communities.
• With the AFWH participation in Community Based Forestry,
actual forest workers’ and harvesters’ ideas, questions and
solutions can begin to really be addressed.