Maggie, a 14-year-old Zambian schoolgirl, cries as she recalls how her stepfather was accused seven years ago of killing a neighbour's child using witchcraft.

As a tear streaks down her left cheek, she describes how a local group started a deadly campaign of persecution against her family, focused on her mother.

"They would follow her and beat her until event-ually she died," says the girl.

For Maggie, now an orphan, her mother's death marked the start of a period of itinerant living, missed schooling and perpetual poverty. Then, this year, came a small but important piece of good news: she was to start receiving funding from Camfed International, the British female education charity, which the Financial Times is supporting in a seasonal appeal for the second year in a row.

The teenager is one of tens of thousands of bright but troubled children whose educational - and life - prospects are potentially being transformed by Camfed, thanks, in part, to FT readers' donations.

"I am grateful for the help because of the problems of raising money," Maggie says. "I'm confident I'll finish school because I've found someone to support me."

She lives in the rural Samfya region, a remote area in north-east Zambia that is ranked by the United Nations as one of the world's worst places to live. In one of Camfed's partner schools in Samfya, children use an iron bar to ring the makeshift playground bell - a car wheel hub hung between two posts.

Cambridge-based Camfed has grown fast since its founding in 1993, expanding from its initial operations in Zimbabwe to Zambia, Tanzania and Ghana.

It hopes to begin operating in at least three more countries during the next five years, as it benefits from rising revenues and partnerships with an increasing number of high-profile businesses, such as Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Edelman, the public relations company.

Camfed's thesis is that female education alleviates poverty by, among other things, lifting family in-comes and cutting HIV infection rates.

The charity offers girls and young women a spectrum of assistance, from £75 ($154, €105) annual grants for school fees, uniforms and basic goods, to start-up capital for small businesses. It aims to make its work self-sustaining, with graduates of Camfed-funded schooling helping to mentor and finance the next generation of girls.

Donations to the FT's appeal have helped Camfed to broaden its Zambian operations dramatically during the past year. It has almost doubled the number of schoolgirls supported by bursaries to 3,666. It estimates that wider support schemes, including mentoring and health education, now benefit almost 80,000 young people.

Inside the classrooms of Camfed's partner schools, the girls talk with openness and courage about the distressing circumstances they have faced. Determined and articulate, yet vulnerable, they have had to deal with teenage pregnancy, ruthless relatives and the effects of HIV/Aids.

These girlsshare a hunger for schooling, stemming from a first-hand knowledge of what it means to miss out. Maggie is not alone in finding her pleasure in education tempered by an awareness that a close relative - in this case her elder sister - is denied such a luxury.

As she concludes her heartbreaking family history, Maggie says that the unexpected educational op-portunity she has been offered urgently needs to be made available to the many other girls who are still un-able to afford school fees.

As she puts it: "Those who haven't gone to school have no income and have a lot of suffering. Those that go to school can get a job and a salary."

In next Monday's FT: Camfed primary school initiative