In this paper we discuss the role of a woman’s organisation in developing a community response to the social changes associated with a large gold mining project in Lihir, a group of four islands in New Ireland Province in Papua New Guinea. Martha Macintyre has been working in Lihir since 1994 monitoring the social impact of mining, and Jacklynne Membup has been employed sihce 1993 in the Community Relations Department of Lihir Gold to coordinate a women’s organisation that assists Lihir women to adapt to the changes resulting from the project. Like all such large projects, the Lihir mine is bringing about enormous social and economic changes, to which people have to adapt extremely quickly. From the outset the company encouraged women’s organisations, partly because official policy in Papua New Guinea requires mining companies to build into their projects certain social amelioration programmes that will assist people and reduce negative impacts. The island-wide women’s organisation formed in Lihir is called Petztorme, a term meaning ‘working together’ in the local language.