"The biggest hardship I have faced in my life is food insecurity. I have been unable to sustain a steady supply of food to my family."

"I have been dreaming of how best I can secure my family's future and I have come to believe livestock keeping is my best choice. We have a large piece of land that can allow me to graze a herd of cattle peacefully. To me receiving this money means I will live my dream life since I will have achieved my goal of securing my family future through investing part of my transfer on livestock. I will have milk for both household use and sales for an extra income. I will also have offspring that will always be my financial security."

"My business of selling take-away foodstuffs has been faced with a lot of challenges since the working site is small and I usually serve most of the customers outside or in some cases under tree shades. I have desired to construct a spacious working site for my business but this has never been easy for me due to financial instability and I am always worried that most of the potential customers may disappear. Once I heard the arrival of GiveDirectly to our village, the hope of upscaling my business got awakened and I am so happy to know that, soon I will have the opportunity to achieve my goals. To ensure this is accomplished, I plan to spend utmost $200 to construct the room and again an amount of $200 will add to my capital and this will mean a new dawn for my business, eventually more profit out of it. For the remaining amount, I will spend $500 to buy a piece of land to have a place of farming since, at the moment, I usually lease from my neighbor during planting seasons. With all this done, I am sure of living the life of my dream, hence, this is basically what receiving this money means to me."

"In the year 2016, we were faced with long drought that led to lose of vegetation and water in our area. As a newly married woman, this was the biggest hardship I have ever faced in my life. It is still vivid in my mind how far, the much time I used to spend fetching water. I almost gave up in my marriage out of this."

"Lack of a stable source of income has been my biggest challenge. I do casual jobs as Manson, due to the low living standard of my neighbors getting this work is very difficult. Sometimes one can stay the whole week without getting a job. Also, due to prolonged drought in my area subsistence farming cannot do well hence you can stay the whole day doing nothing and the family expect me to provide basic needs. This has been stressing me as a parent for failing in my responsibilities."

"My daughter was involved in a road accident early this year(2020) whereby she broke her hand. It forced her to be admitted to our district hospital for three months. At that time our financial condition was very difficult .The hospital bill accumulated forcing her to spend an extra month in hospital while I was searching for money to clear the bill. I tried to raise money from relatives and friends but I did not manage to raise enough. In the end, the doctors agreed to release us and pay back later.I have not cleared the bill to date. This financial problem is therefore the biggest hardship in my life."

"We work as charcoal vendors. Sometimes the market becomes very low whereby we get an income of 5,000 Kenya shillings per month which is not enough to feed our nine children. It sometimes forces us to skip meals . This financial problem is the biggest hardship in my life."

"Iam very happy"

"The size of the land that I currently own is so small. I had to subdivide it into three portions; one for the house and compound, the other for cultivation and the last portion as grazing field for my cattle. Due to the small nature of the portions, the produce that I get from the farm I cultivate is hardly enough to sustain my family throughout the year. This therefore means I have to dig deep by doing some casual jobs on people's farm so as to curb the deficit. This for me is the biggest hardship I have ever faced in life."

"I received the transfer notification on my phone early in the morning. As I went through it, I could not hold the joy that filled my heart that morning. I could now afford to smile looking at the financial hardships I have faced since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic."