"I am a barber by profession and I earn $35 a month. However, this job is seasonal and sometimes unpredictable. As a family man, I am required to provide for my family of 3 always but unfortunately, finances have been a pitfall. It pains me when I do not meet the family's needs always hence viewing myself as a failure."

"I have lived in this village for last 5 years. Came here in 2017 when I separated with my then husband in Nakuru. My brother gave me this house to stay at with my family of 7. The biggest challenge is that I don't have a place to call home. This land belongs to my brother. It's expected that as time goes by, I buy my own land to settle. It makes me sad because women are not allowed to own ancestral land in our culture. To do some planting, I am forced to hire a piece of land. This affects my ability to plant crops such as maize, groundnuts and millet. Therefore, we may not have enough food as a family."

"We used to depend on charcoal burning to earn a living but this has been restricted by the government. I could earn $40 in a week which was enough to sustain the basic needs of my family. Recently, I am not able to even purchase food for lack of money. I am forced to seek casual jobs which can earn me only $5 in a week. Financial constraints is the greatest challenge."

"Land determines how successful you can be as a farmer and the more you have it, the better the income you can get. I have a 0.5 acre farm right now and I use this space to rear 2 dairy cows. I make an average of $25 monthly throughout the year. My income is little basically due to the high cost of production. I am forced to buy feed that I could have produced if I had enough land size. I therefore wish to increase the current land size by another half an acre."

"I am facing a big challenge currently with my income which has been the root cause of all the problems that I am facing. I am a teacher by profession and I earn $40 every month from coaching students in a nearby primary school. This amount half of it goes to paying my student loan and the rest is left to cater to the needs of my family of 3 and for my parent also. This leaves me with nothing to invest or acquire any asset. This is a trend that has been worrying me for a long time now that in future I'll have nothing to show for in the work that am currently doing."

"Lack of financial stability is the main challenge that I face at the moment. I am a dairy farmer and just last month I lost 3 cows to East Coast Fever and this has been a setback because they were all producing 30 liters of milk per day. I have lost income since I used to earn $18 per day from the sale of milk. I have not recovered from the shock and I don't know if I will continue with this venture."

"Food insecurity is one major challenge that my family is facing. I am epileptic and this hinders me from working to my full potential in order to provide for my young family. I normally get at least one seizure per day and I always confine myself to my compound to make sure I am safe in case of an attack. This leaves my wife as the only breadwinner and more often than not she is overwhelmed. She works as a casual laborer, working in other people's farms, doing manual jobs like weeding, to put food on the table for the rest of us. The much that she can earn on a good day is $3. This is not enough to buy 3 meals for the day."

"It is 1 year now since I started my food kiosk but there have been so many financial challenges to operating it. My capital has ever been $15 and it has not increased yet, which means in a day, I only make $1 after paying my worker $1.5. Since my husband has other responsibilities, he has not gotten the opportunity to help me in this business and I find it hard to save and expand my job. Hence, the stress of operating a low-performing job is the biggest challenge that I am currently facing."

"It is slightly past 1 year now since I separated from my husband and this left me with the burden of taking care of my 8 children. Considering that my tailoring job has not been stable since I came back to my maternal home, I have faced a lot of challenges including the provision of my family's basic needs. What a life of worries as a mother! My children's education is what has been affected most since they have frequently been sent home due to the lack of fees. At home, we have been forfeiting meals, a situation that has affected our health status. Therefore, I consider financial instability as my biggest challenge."

"Lately, the cost of living has risen which has affected us a lot, especially the cost of food. We depend on casual jobs which have become hard to come by and so it is a tall order to put food on the table. We have resorted to food rationing where we skip lunch just to have supper so in a day we survive on one meal. Sometimes we feel so hungry but we have no otherwise but to withstand the situation. In the past, we used to buy 2 kg of maize grain at $0.7 but it has since tripled to $2.20 per 2 Kg which is expensive and at times unaffordable."