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Treading where others have failed, some of Australia's top companies are pioneering a project to inject expertise into the rugged outreaches of Papua New Guinea.
Companies such as Fairtrade, IBM, KPMG, Nestle, Visy packaging and Macquarie Bank, as part of the Business for Millennium Development (B4MD), are venturing far from their corporate boardrooms.
B4MD hope to drive communities toward the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that are at the heart of a partnership signed last August by Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd and PNG counterpart Michael Somare.
The UN reports it is "very unlikely" PNG will reach any of eight goals that set out to increase living standards in countries around the world by 2015.
Last week B4MD took their first tentative step to change that with a trip to remote villages in the Southern Highlands Province (SHP), where the massive ExxonMobil-led Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project will be built.
B4MD sees the $US12.5 billion ($A16 billion) project - touted as potentially doubling PNG's Gross Domestic Product while tripling the country's export revenues - as a now or never opportunity.
For those unaccustomed to the problems associated with development in PNG it's a daunting challenge.
Mark Ingram, chief executive of B4MD, said companies have already made verbal agreements for tangible business models in the SHP.
"On one hand it is the most difficult market we could take," he said.
"But on the other hand we should make a very concerted effort to do what we can. Within a month we will be back to progress this."
Getting the region's abundance of agriculture to supply Oil Search's Hides gas facilities and potentially other parts of PNG is the initial B4MD pilot scheme.
As is a Fairtrade and Nestle partnership for the region's coffee growers.
"The more we can get business leaders to engage with these people, to talk to them, dialogue, empathise, then we are going to see some changes," Ingram said.
"The beauty of the private sector engagement is you pilot something in one region and if you get the model right it scales up.
"Instead of writing a cheque to a charity this is a new way of helping development."
Peter Botten, Oil Search managing director, said the B4MD mission was the first time there has ever been a coordinated approach between the private sector and grassroots PNG.
"It is critical that we ensure the sustainable economic development of communities in Gulf Province and SHP beyond the lifespan of the LNG operations," he said.
Even Somare issued a challenge to highlands landowners to make something of the billions they will receive from the LNG's project.
"For the next 20 years there will be 20 billion kina going into those areas and I hope the people with their respective provincial governments have development plans in place to see changes in their areas," he said.
The Business for Poverty Relief Alliance, formed in Australia in 2006, was rebranded as the B4MD in 2007 to focus more closely on the UN Millennium Development Goals.
B4MD believes that Australian businesses have the opportunity to do much more to reduce poverty while developing business with the emerging markets of the Asia Pacific region.
PNG is known as the "land of the unexpected", so it's going to be a tough slog for the alliance of companies.
But a determined Botten and Ingram both say: "Watch this space."
