"I am a businesswoman selling palm wine. This business is dependent on the weather condition. We have had three years without rain in the village. Coconut palms have gone dry it is hard to harvest wine. I stopped my business one year a go. Since then I have struggled in life. My family has gone without food for a while. The Source of a reliable income is the challenge I am facing."

"My husband Ndoro works as a casual worker. He earns approximately $ 10 per work. I am a housewife who depends on agriculture and it has been three years now without rain in the village. I have two children who are schooling at Sosodem Primary and each pays $ 50 per year. The income received by my husband caters only to food. So the children have been on and off of school due to the fees arrears. Lack of a reliable source of income for the family is the current challenge I am facing."

"I am a substance farmer and it is three years now without rain in our village. Farming would provide food for my family of seven for the whole year. I normally do farming for all 2 acres piece of land and harvest approximately 10 bags of maize each 90kg. My husband works as a school bus driver in Nairobi. He earns around $ 200 per month. The money used to support school fees payment for our three children who are at Sosodem primary. Right now the money caters to food only. Every child is supposed to pay $ 48 per year. It is now a challenge to raise the school fees. This has caused them to be off of school for two weeks now due to the school fees balances. Raising school fees is the current challenge I am facing."

"I am currently looking forward to purchasing construction materials to help build a new house for my family of six after making full payment for the piece of land from my neighbor. I have had to rely on casual labor, which has been difficult to come by due to the current economic downturn. This has been the primary source of my children's school fees as well as the daily foodstuffs that I always purchase with my daily wages. I intend to begin saving for the project and will begin construction as soon as I have enough money to purchase the materials."

"I spent part of my second transfer on buying a sewing machine which cost almost $ 200. I graduated some years back but unfortunately, I have never been able to secure my machine. However, I used to work at my friend's workshop and paid very little commission. I could hardly meet all my family's daily needs considering that I am a widow of two. Therefore having this machine has brought a very huge transformation since whatever I earn is all mine. Also bought some materials which I will be selling in my workshop and this will be my additional income. To add to that, I paid fees for my children who are in grades one and two respectively. I had to pay in advance so that they can be able to sit for the exams with their colleagues. I also had to save a portion of the cash to cater for any emergency that might arise. Later on, I had to purchase sufficient foodstuffs for my family that would at least take us to a month."

"Life has a fair share of challenges and the main one that I face is financial instability. My husband works as a teacher and because of a loan he took from a bank his salary is just $40 a month. This money is not enough to meet even his upkeep leave alone his family's. I earn $200 which caters for school fees for our children in school, food, and clothing. The school fees is $150 for my two children leaving me with $50 to spread across other pressing needs of the family."

"The challenge I am facing now days is land slides and flash floods which destroy my gardens when I plant crops leaving us with no food to survive on. I am also finding hardships with starting up a business because I have no financial capital since all my agricultural projects were destroyed by landslides and flash floods. The other thing that disturbed my mind so much is staying in the area where I am always worried of my family being taken by landslides anytime. Indeed we don't comfortably sleep in the house because anytime, we can be swept away by this kind of disaster."

"Life is unbearable and we struggle a lot to make ends meet. My husband, Leonard, is in college in Nairobi and so I am left alone to fend for our family. We struggle to buy foodstuffs. Food insecurity has been a problem for some time now, we use to plant maize crops in the past and it used to do well but since the outbreak of the maize necrosis disease, its production has been a thing of the past. We are forced to buy from vendors at the nearby Kapkwen Market. Recently, the price of maize grain shot up to $1.80 per Kg which is costly and sometimes unaffordable. We live from hand to mouth and we are always worried about what to eat the next day. We live each day as it comes but with uncertainties."

"If only I have the option of choosing a career I would be so happy but I do not have this privilege. As uneducated as I am I can only vend charcoal, farm, or raise livestock, all of which I do. Every morning I wake up and think of the work I have to do just to put food on the table I get depressed. I know they say one should not eat unless they work, but honestly not as hard as I do. I long for the day I can put up a business and maybe for the first time breathe and relax as I run my business."

"All process of training and registration was perfectly done and since the money was unconditional, most of the people invested in different income-generation projects. I do not find anything that GiveDirectly did not do well."