SHIVA Charity has built 28 nursery schools on the East Coast of Sri Lanka, and now needs to maintain and service them by providing relevant equipment and materials. However the quality of teaching in this area of Sri Lanka is particularly low, due to the poverty and the lack of training and materials. Many teachers have never played with educational toys, and do not have the experience of art and craft work, or drama. Similarly the children have not had the positive and fulfilling experience of creative and constructive activities within the classroom. We need to build a resource and training centre where teachers can be introduced to materials like hand puppets, masks, dolls houses, toy shops, coloured papers, glue and safety scissors, paints and musical instruments. and all those materials we take for granted in nursery schools in the UK. Teachers will be encouraged to use the materials themselves so they develop practical knowledge and skills.These materials would be distributed freely as a resources pack to each school. This will facilitate their transition from chalk and talk teaching methods to Montessori style child centred learning. The benefits to the children will be enormous, and will give them a much better start in their educational life. We envisage that the immediate help will be to the 50 teachers at the SHIVA nursery schools, and then to other nursery and primary schools in Sri Lanka.... in the long term helping tens of thousands of children, and improveng education at its very root.