There isn’t a playground, just a dirt yard, at the JS Varfley school in Kingsville, but that doesn’t stop the children chasing each other around. It’s a cliché, but the boys really do play with footballs made from scrunched-up plastic bags, while the girls skip and braid each other’s hair. Their laughter echoes across the surrounding fields.

More than 400 children attend the little school in rural Liberia, their lives a testament to the upheaval the country has suffered.

Charles Dennis, the headmaster, keeps a special register in the ramshackle hut that serves as his office, which records the home circumstances of the children who attend the school.

Some have no parents and are living alone or struggling to support younger brothers and sisters. Almost all the children work, either before or after school. “They sell peanuts or roast corn at the side of the road,” says Dennis. “We try to keep an eye on them and feed them when we can. We would like to do more but we have very little to give.”

Liberia, peaceful for five years now, was devastated by 14 years of bloody civil war that saw thousands killed and countless families uprooted. What was once a middlingly prosperous African country has been reduced to one of the poorest places on earth. One in nine children does not make it to his or her third birthday and two-thirds of its people live on less than $1 a day.

If every person who bought The Sunday Times gave just £1 we could make a dramatic difference to life in Kingsville. Education is the key to progress, but though education has recently been made compulsory – and free – in Liberia there is nowhere near enough money to make decent schooling a reality. The Varfley school, for instance, would be condemned in Britain.

Last year one of the walls fell down and the roof is now precariously supported by bamboo poles. Overcrowding has been relieved by a temporary extension, built by teachers and children.

The classrooms have dirt floors and bare, dirt walls. The only children with exercise books or pencils are those with parents who can afford them. “I dream of a library full of books,” says the headmaster, “one for every child.”

Over the coming year, with your help, The Sunday Times Christmas Appeal aims to transform the school and improve the lives of everyone in Kingsville, home to some 20,000 people. The British charity Save the Children already supports a clinic in Kingsville and has offered to support the school. We want to help Save the Children to rebuild the school and to fill its classrooms with books, chalks, coloured pens and posters, and make sure the teachers get paid.

Varfley is meant to be a primary school but so many children missed their education during the war years – or could not afford to go to school – that its pupils range from three to 19 years old.

Doyee Daye, 13, lost his parents during the war and now lives with his grandmother. When the school was private, she could not afford to send him there, so he learnt to read and write at home. “I am starting in the second grade because my grandmother says I am a clever boy,” he says proudly. “She is very happy that I am going to school. She says I must go every day.”

There are no chairs or desks in the school, so every day children come walking over the fields balancing their chair on their head, or sit on the dirt floor. At the end of the day they take turns to sweep up.

Davina McCall, the television presenter, who visited Kingsville and made a number of films for our specially created website – which allows you to “visit” the village and meet its inhabitants, including Doyee – was bowled over by the enthusiasm at the school.

“The teachers don’t get paid – I couldn’t believe that. There’re no books, no pens, nowhere to play,” she says. “You think of how many times your kids have moaned about getting dressed in their uniform in the morning and you look at these kids. They just love school.

“One girl, Bonetta, made a huge impression on me. At 15, she was going to school for the first time and looked immaculate in her uniform. She had such a sense of pride about finally going to school.”

We want to help Save the Children transform Kingsville by refurbishing the school and clinic and installing pumps to bring clean water to everyone who lives there.

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