My top priority is to secure quality education for my children. Before the coming of this project, they often faced numerous interruptions in their schooling due to my inability to pay school fees. However, with the transfers, these interruptions have significantly decreased, and my children can now attend school regularly. I am genuinely pleased with these positive changes, and I am committed to allocating both my forthcoming transfers and savings to ensure that my children continue their education smoothly. I firmly believe that education will equip them with the essential skills needed to secure a better future. I will always be grateful to GiveDirectly for the support they have provided to me and my community.

I work as a boda boda taxi driver, and I also supply charcoal in Mariakani town to support my family of nine. Despite facing challenges in my business, I am grateful that the transfers have significantly boosted my income. Before receiving the transfers, our situation was bad, not just for me, but for the entire community. We struggled to afford food and send our children to school, including covering expenses like uniforms and books. However, I am glad that this situation has improved. Now, I can afford to pay school fees for my children, while the income from my business caters to our food and other expenses. From the transfers received, I allocated $34 to purchase books, shoes, and uniforms for my children so that they could start the new school term. Additionally, I used $49 to settle school fees and examination fees to ensure they could sit their exams. Finally, $19 was spent on buying food and other necessary essentials that we had run out of. These transfers have truly transformed my life, and I am immensely grateful to this organization for their support.

My children used to always be sent out of school due to financial lack. I would do my best to raise cash from my charcoal selling business and my motorcycle business but due to a slow market I would not make enough to sustain them in school. My goal is use my transfers to ensure my children get an education and never miss a day of school. I hope for them to get a chance at opportunities I could not get because of my education.

I thank Givedirectly for the relief it has provided us as parents. My biggest fear as a father is having my children home because I do not have enough to ensure they are not sent away from school due to school fee deficits. Givedirectly transfers have helped me ensure that this is a fear I no longer have. I had cleared school fees for some of the children by August but some were still pending I spent $14 to pay for school fees for three children. Since at the time they were also opening school I bought books and pens which cost $20 for all the 6 of them. In September my child got into an accident and broke his arm. I spent about $120 in his treatment, $34 came from my transfers. In October I bought Uniform for two of my children whose uniform was badly worn out for $14 and I also bought school shoes for them at $3. I bought food for the rest of the family at $17.

I want my children to get through school. I know this program will be with us only for a while and I would not want to go at a loss. I want to invest this transfers to educate my children so that if the rains continue I can invest my earnings in the farm lands and increase yields to ensure we have a plenty supply of food. I want at least all the children to clear school or at least get to the end so they can each get a chance of supporting myself and my wife when things get better for them.

The biggest challenge we had been experiencing is school fees and food. We are now in the planting season and my earnings were directed to farming. The transfers I got from Givedirectly went into paying school fees, buying books and also buying shoes for school. In April I had a debt of $22 in school which I cleared and used the rest of the amount $12 buying flour for food. In May I bought 12 books for sic children each at $0.4 and the reminder went into clearing school fees. In June I spent $11.5 in sorting school fees debts for my six children and used $5 to buy pens while $12 went into getting them shoes and $5 went into paying people to help weed my plants.

My hope for the coming years is to see all my children go to school smoothly without being interrupted due to the lack of school fees. To achieve this, I want to continue with livestock keeping, therefore, I would ensure that every month I purchase chicken or a goat and would be selling them in bits to get the money to pay for the children's school fees.

I received the transfers at a time when I was in dire need of money. I have seven children in school, and all of them were required with some money in order to sit for their examination, but I did not have the money and was wondering where I could get help. Luckily I got the transfers and finally managed to divide KES. 2500 among the seven to settle their examination fees. The remaining amount of KES. 970 was also of great help in terms of buying food in the house.

My priority at the moment is to ensure that I can afford the tuition fees for seven of my kids, especially because they are quite costly and yet I do not make that much money. Therefore, I will use a great deal of what I receive to keep my children in school so that they can pursue their education. I also intend on buying a couple of farm animals, preferably goats and poultry, so that they can come to my aid when I am struggling financially. Nutrition is also definitely on my list because I have a huge family and the drought has brought a lot of hunger back to the village.

Due to the drought we are currently facing, we must budget for water because it is scarce. I am grateful for the assistance because it allowed me to meet my family's needs including food and water. Each of the 100 liters we consume each day costs $0.8. Therefore, the food and water that have kept us alive for the past three months cost me $79 total. Thanks to the transfers because it made it possible.  We are fortunate to have five primary-age children, and at the time I received the most recent transfer, I used some of it to pay the $25 arrear that was keeping them from taking the end-of-year exam. For my family's food, I used the remaining $19 of my money. I make charcoal and provide it to them. Although I burn charcoal and supply it to customers in our area, I do not get much money from it. Since charcoal is the main source of revenue in our area, the majority of the trees have been exhausted, and there are no longer any trees available for the production of charcoal. We are appreciative of the help because it has improved our financial situation.

I hold an opinion that GiveDirectly as an NGO does pretty well in giving unconditional and non-refundable cash transfers. This contributes toward bringing a positive change in the living standard of the people that qualify for the support. When it launches its program, it ensures that community members are well sensitized so that they can make a choice to be enrolled in the program without being coerced. Individual participation in the program is not compulsory but out of one's volition. In contrast, there is nothing that GiveDirectly does not do well.

I have a large family of eight members. To ensure that I meet their educational and other basic needs, I resorted to doing a Boda-Boda taxi. Although it is strenuous work, through it I had been meeting my family's needs. However, due to the hike in fuel prices, Boda-Boda taxi profitability has gone down. As a result, I have been struggling in raising school fees for my six children. Immediately after I received the transfer, I opted to pay fee arrears worth KES 1,500. Currently, I am at peace because they can comfortably study without being sent home for fee collection. To supplement our food store, I spent the other half of the transfer, KES 1,500 on food. Courtesy of the transfer, life has been bearable for us in the past two months. I am therefore indebted to GiveDirectly for the timely support.

I remember receiving the transfers quite early in the day and I was actually running dime errands. I overwhelmed with so much joy especially since I had already received a warning the previous day that my children would get kicked out of school if I did not end up paying the tuition fee. That is the reason why receiving the transfers made me ecstatic because it meant that I could finally settle my debt

This was actually my first transfer that I received since getting enrolled and it was definitely life changing because the funds assisted me in keeping my children in school which is quite important to me and them as well. I count myself lucky because were it not for receiving the funds when I did then my children would have stayed home for quite sometime.

As soon as I received the transfers I decided to pay school fees for my six children because they were literally on the verge of being kicked out of school because I had not yet finished paying the debt in school fees. Therefore I used KES 1,700 and paid the tuition fees . Afterwards I went ahead and bought a sack of maize worth KES 880 because it would much cheaper than buying packets of maize flour, plus it meant that it would sustain my family and I longer. I was left with about KES 420 where I used KES 100 for medication for my children since they were sick then used KES 120 to purchase a kilogram of sugar and the remaining KES 200 I decided to purchase stationery for my children since they were resuming school.