A SMALL idea inspired by a Sound of Music tribute has ballooned into a massive fundraising effort.

More than 200 schoolchildren will tonight perform at a concert at Chester Gateway theatre to raise cash for the tsunami appeal.

Songs, dances and solo contributions will feature at the event, entitled For The Children, which involves pupils from Overleigh St Mary's, Dodleston, Hoole, Shocklach, Tarvin and Woodlands primary schools.

Ambitious mothers Jane Henshall, of Westminster Park, and Sandrine Wilson, of Hoole, initially hoped to organise an event involving the two schools their children attend.

'The idea came about after watching the Sound of Music tribute at Christmas,' said Jane, who has two children, Ellie, eight and Katie, four.

'Sandrine and I work in the marketing department at HBOS. We wanted to do something.'

The mothers approached their children's schools with their idea.

And when Dodleston Primary headteacher Hilary Bushnell learned of the plans, she

e-mailed every West Cheshire primary school, resulting in an impressive response.

'The idea at first was to do something in the village hall,' said Jane.

'Then we decided to go big so we booked the Gateway Theatre - at one stage we had the theatre booked and nothing else.'

Luckily six schools agreed to take part, taking the project to a whole new scale.

'We expected 100 pupils and we've ended up with 200 - it's quite a task,' said Jane.

'My children are very excited at the idea of performing at the Gateway, but also we want them to understand why they are doing it.'

While participating schools are busy rehearsing, Jane and Sandrine have taken charge of the marketing.

'A Manchester printers have done the posters and programmes for free,' said Jane.

The children will tonight be wearing T-shirts, which the enterprising mothers also managed to get for free.

The programme will be varied, including choirs, dance groups and soloists.

'We have a quite a shy little boy who does Elvis,' said Jane.

The mothers have attracted financial support from friends and colleagues.

'We've had some donations and our boss covered the cost of the theatre, which was a boost to the fundraising,' 'We've held a couple of events in our department - a sale, raffle, an afternoon of games and sold cakes. We want to thank our colleagues for this. We're hoping for about £4,000,' said the mother-of-two.

'Our main thanks go to Mrs Bushnell for all her hard work in co-ordinating the schools and to the teachers and children involved.'