Inspecting contaminated water supplies, meeting impoverished villagers and sweating under mosquito nets in Bangladesh is not normally part of the job description for the head of European communications at a multinational company...Patty O’Hayer wears more than one hat at Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch consumer goods group. She is also head of global partnerships. As such, she plays a pivotal role in Project Laser Beam, a $50m five-year partnership between the private sector and the UN, which has the ambitious goal of ending child malnutrition...“If children aren’t getting sufficient nutrients in their first two years, this is one of the key factors that determines the GDP of a country,” she says...Project Laser Beam, which launched another pilot in Indonesia this month, breaks new ground...[The project] brings together a large number of partners from the public, private and voluntary sectors. DSM, the Dutch life sciences group, Kraft Foods and Unilever were founding corporate partners, working with the UN, the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, a Geneva-based foundation, governments and local development agencies. Other businesses, including Indonesian food companies, have joined...[I]nstead of just throwing money at feeding children, the project aims to find lasting solutions by tackling the causes of malnutrition – lack of nutrients, contaminated water, chronic illness, poor hygiene, lack of income – in target areas and then replicating these solutions elsewhere...[I]t combines corporate funding with business skills and long-term business goals