The Pinchot Institute and its partners held the ninth annual Week in Washington from April 24-28, 2006.

The Week in Washington is a training session specifically created to help grassroots forest practitioners understand the federal budget and appropriations processes; introduce them to specific tools and techniques for effective engagement in the policy arena; and provide them with opportunities to meet directly with key policy makers. Over the near-decade since the first Week in Washington, the workshop has become a pivotal event in the shaping of a combined voice for community-based forestry initiatives.

This year, twenty-two participants attended from across the country. They included several private landowners from Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina; a member of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska; the executive director of a watershed council in Oregon; and a mobile forest worker with more than 30 years of experience working in forests all over the West.

Highlights of the week included attendance at a congressional hearing, meetings with several congressional representatives and agency officials, and a presentation by one participant to the National Capital Chapter of the Society of American Foresters. At the largest gathering of the week, participants made presentations to several high-level Forest Service officials on the topics of land retention, tribal rights and access to federal lands, barriers to partnerships with the agency, and the abuses faced by many forest workers and harvesters. One participant later noted that, because of Week in Washington, she is now organizing her neighbors to set up meetings with their congressional representatives, and that she is "much more interested in community forestry and plan[s] to become more aware, informed, and involved."

The Pinchot Institute's partners in presenting the Week in Washington are American Forests , the National Network of Forest Practitioners , and the Communities Committee of the Seventh American Forest Congress.