Partners With Melanesians Inc. (PWM) started as an idea by staff and students of the Language and Literature Department at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1985. Since then, there have been numerous developments within the organization as well as events outside of the organization that have shaped the history of the organization.

Initially, it was set up to support groups and communities who were involved in education and development initiatives in rural communities of Papua New Guinea. As time progressed, PWM started work on the Managalas Plateau of the Oro Province in what has come to be one of the best models of community mobilising and community development work around conservation in the country.

With initial financial support coming from various sources including MacArthur Foundation, the World Bank, Biodiversity Conservation Network (BCN), work around Consensus Building was started in the late `80`s. As the project evolved to include more and more Zones (finally covering the whole Afore District), the need for a long term commitment from donor Partners was realised when the Norwegian Rainforest Foundation (NRF) entered into this partnership in 1997.

Since then, various other partners have joined in this project including the Government of PNG through the Targeted Community Development Programme (TCDP) and Community Aid Abroad (CAA) of Australia.

After Fifteen years, it was felt strongly that there was a need to evaluate the effectiveness of the organization in meeting its goals and re-looking at its objectives to better meet the needs of its target clientele, an evaluation was proposed which would then be followed by a workshop to look at all aspects of the organization.

In September 2000, a major evaluation of the Managalas Conservation Area Support Project (also called the Managalas Sustainable Development Project) was carried out by a group of independent evaluators. The team comprised Ms. Tailepa Samuel, Mr. Greg Abare and Mr. Paul Chatterton. The evaluation was funded by the Norwegian Rainforest Foundation.

The Strategic Planning Workshop in 2001 was to follow-on from the evaluation. Unfortunately, at the time of the workshop, the organization had not received the report from the evaluators yet. However, based on a preliminary brief to the Board of the Organization, this workshop was planned and carried out at Naokanane village on the Managalas Plateau in April 2001. This workshop was funded by Community Aid Abroad.

Present at the workshop were all the stakeholders including representatives of all the existing Zones on the Plateau, staff of PWM, staff of MDT, PWM Consultants, and a couple of members from the donor community.

This workshop was facilitated by Mr. Simon Passingan of the East New Britain Sosel Ekson Komiti (ENBSEK), one of PwMs Partner organizations.

Discussions at the workshop were initially centred on the history of Partners With Melanesians. However, as the workshop progressed, issues were raised about whether the workshops should be looking at PWM or Managalas Development Trust (MDT), a recently established local NGO that would be overseeing the project at the Field Level. Eventually, it was agreed to that the Plan would be for the Project rather than for individual NGO`s or CBO`s.