He was a boy of six when it happened. He’d enjoyed a somewhat privileged upbringing to that point, his grandfather a respected local businessman, his parents capitalizing on an attractive opportunity in the United States. But this was Sierra Leone, and a civil war was raging.

Thousands were being killed. Children just like him were being brutalized into pint-sized soldiers. And the fighting was getting closer to the capital, Freetown. So, dragged from school by his grandmother, there was a scamper for his life. He was thrown on a boat. Dumped at an airport. He made his way onto a flight bound for Paris. There, the keen eye of an air stewardess plucked the errant boy from a sea of people, and got him on to the US-bound plane intended for him. Soon, he was in a new home, in the arms of his mother once more.

Michael Lahoud, the Philadelphia Union midfielder, now lines up against the best Major League Soccer has to offer. But back in 1993, Lahoud was just a boy about to embark on that fraught journey.

Sierra Leone was a couple of years into a civil war that would last for more than 10 years. “I remember there was a shift in things when I was five years old,” Lahoud tells the Guardian. “And – I grew up with my grandparents because my parents had gone to the United States ahead of me – all of a sudden they had a shift in tone, warning not to go out in the bushes and the wilderness, which is where our backyard on the outskirts of Freetown crept up to.

“I never understood why. We had a waterfall in our backyard. The jungle was our backyard. And all of a sudden they shifted their tone. I didn’t know it, but that was because the rebels were in the jungle, and that’s where they – any kids my age or a little bit older – would capture them and turn them into child soldiers, or kill them if they refused. That was what awaited me in my backyard and I didn’t even know it.”

Michael Lahoud takes on Benny Feilhaber in the US Open Cup final. Photograph: Andy Mead/YCJ/Icon Sportswire/Corbis

Much of what later transpired in Sierra Leone was closely guarded from Lahoud. He was busy getting used to the United States. Homesickness, the culture, the food. Especially the food. He’d never seen such an array of fried offerings in his life. Most of all he hungered for cassava leaf stew. In this heady mix, soccer proved a succor. It was a language he had honed in Freetown that his new friends also understood. His technical ability stood apart. Eventually came college and MLS, but then came a sort of epiphany.

In 2010, Cindy Nofziger entered Lahoud’s life. She handed him a copy of A Long Way Gone, the memoirs of Ishmael Beah, a fellow Sierra Leonean. In it, Beah chronicles his life as a child soldier thrust into the fighting. Lahoud never looked back. Suddenly what took place on the soccer field seemed to matter less. So he started another journey. But on this one, he had a companion: fellow MLS star and Sierra Leonean national team member Kei Kamara, the Columbus Crew striker.

Together, they are now two parts of efforts to help restore and expand the struggling education system in Sierra Leone. That culminated recently in the opening of the Kei Kamara-Michael Lahoud Education for All School in Allentown, a resettlement district just west of Freetown, to where many victims of the war fled to. The work was accomplished after years of fundraising by the pair, and through Seattle-based Schools for Salone, the charity headed up by Nofziger, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sierra Leone back in the 1980s, where Beah is also an advocate.

Kamara, too, bears all too raw memories of the brutality back home: of a vivid story of escape, scurrying hundreds of miles north on a boat at 14 for the Gambia, then later flying to the US, where he joined his mother. His trauma lives on in recurring nightmares. He watched cousins ripped away by rebels, listened to the rumblings of explosions from the classroom. He remembers running for his life, bullets flying.

Kenema, Kamara’s hometown in the east of Sierra Leone and once a thriving trading center, was hit severely during the war. The rebel RUF amassed control of much of the country’s diamond-mining regions, of which Kenema was one. The jewels helped fuel and sustain the fighting. Similar to her first meeting with Lahoud, Nofziger also awakened something in Kamara. For him, his experience sharpened his focus on ensuring the next generation of Sierra Leoneans received the sort of education that was ripped from his grasp.

“Cindy explained to us everything she was doing over in Sierra Leone and it wasn’t anything we could say no to,” Kamara tells the Guardian. “It was such an entertaining idea to say: ‘I’m going into little villages and I’m taking down schools built with just the roofs of houses, or just a wooden school. I’m taking them down and putting brick buildings up.’ And, really, just give these kids a better shot, a better environment to be in for school.”

Kei Kamara at the Children in Crisis Primary School – the school in Freetown that Kei and Kristin visited in 2013 – with some of the teachers. Photograph: Cindy Nofziger

It was the US that provided Kamara’s own shot. Early struggles in his first stint at Columbus, then San Jose Earthquakes and Houston Dynamo, eventually turned to goalscoring prowess at Sporting Kansas City, which won a move to the English Premier League with Norwich City. Now back at Columbus, 22 goals in 31 regular season games makes him the most dangerous striker in MLS.That success, Kamara says, is a debt he owes to Sierra Leone.

“I work really hard in my career to put Sierra Leone on the map. Playing in England, playing in America – I’m an American at the same time – but there are so many of us that are Americans playing in these leagues. But just my little bit of a background being Sierra Leonean, if I can raise awareness to help out the kids of Sierra Leone, that’s what I’m all about. Because when I grew up, I wish I had all these shots, I wish I had all these chances to really go to school and do all these amazing things. Our schools were cut short here and there because of the civil war.”

Sierra Leone has made strides since the war ended in 2002 but it remains one the world’s poorest countries. Schools for Salone has built 19 primary schools and two libraries since 2005. Support for teacher training and scholarships also form part of the group’s output. A home for war orphans is planned at the site of the Kamara-Lahoud school. The charity’s work is focused on empowering the recipient towns, not simply providing a handout. Locals must help accommodate skilled labor, contribute to unskilled labor, donate land, and help to locally source materials.

“Part of what happened during the war was the rebels came in and destroyed everything,” explains Nofziger. “And because of the fear, most schools shut down. There was a 10- to 12-year period where for many people there just weren’t schools in operation, then after the war and during, many of the educated people who had any means, or qualified in some way, fled. So you’re left with a lot of people living in these really rural villages and there’s nobody there to run the schools or be the teachers. So the most educated person there, who knew basic math or knew how to read and write, became a teacher. These are places of subsistence farmers, living on less than a dollar a day. If they don’t grow their food, they don’t eat.”

Tapping into the Sierra Leonean diaspora has yielded significant results. But Nofziger also takes pride in bringing Lahoud and Kamara closer together as people. Initially, their efforts were separate. Each had a distinct pool of raised funds. As time and the rigors of fundraising wore on, they combined. The tangible result, of course, is the Kamara-Lahoud primary school. Aptly, it will soon acquire a small soccer pitch – something of a rare commodity in the Allentown area due to difficulties in acquiring land.

Beyond the relationship forged in humanitarian work, both now are also Sierra Leone national team caps. And each are now using their voice and experience to seek change in the country’s footballing structure. Both have taken a step back from selection for national team duties, for slightly different reasons. Kamara, who has ruled himself out indefinitely, cites frustration over the off-the-field issues. Lahoud speaks in similar terms, also noting an inability to play at home in Sierra Leone for more than year owing to the Ebola outbreak. This, he explains, has led to uncomfortable journeys to other nations for “home” matches where the sense that they were unwelcome guests was palpable. Both speak of a brimming talent pool undermined by poor governance. Ultimately, they seek a change they believe will provide Sierra Leone a better shot at qualifying for major tournaments. Change would also likely hasten their return to the fold.

Meanwhile, back in his adopted homeland, Lahoud senses a second awakening. After a couple of indifferent years in MLS, Philadelphia boss Jim Curtin painted a valuable picture for the boy who grew up around Washington DC. Curtin pointed out his abundant talent, but telling him that, to realize it, he would have to make soccer the No1 priorit. This season, Philadelphia failed to reach the playoffs and a cruel penalty shootout defeat in the US Open Cup final to Sporting Kansas City ruled out silverware. But Lahoud found a hitherto elusive quantity.

“With the school, I’ve finally found the balance,” he says. “That’s a part of who I am. I’m not going to change that per se. This is something that I love doing. It’s a part of my story. But I think the challenge that I accepted – and I’m proud of the work I’ve been doing – has shown on the field this year. It’s finding that balance. I can still be me and be passionate about the things I’m passionate about, but football does come first. It’s my job. And without it, all the other stuff I do doesn’t happen. I think I lost that along the way.”