"Inadequacy of finance to cater for my family has been the biggest hardship I have faced in life. I lost my job 4 months ago due to corona virus pandemic which has forced me to look for an alternative source of income. I am currently working as a casual labourer within the village which is hard to come by yet I am a single mother of two. I used to earn Ksh 8,000 a month before I lost my job working as a milk coolant attendant in a wealthy family within the village. My future plans is to buy a land within the village where I can build a house for my family and live a stress free life."

"Raising up my children is what has been my biggest hardship. I lost my first wife who left me with two children whom I raised with a lot of struggle for 9 years before I remarried. I now have six more children and satisfying their needs,especially food and education needs has been an uphill task. I depend on my farm which has low yields. I try supplementing with casual jobs but I still get little income from it."

"The main challenge that we face is that of food insecurity as we rearly have enough."

"My child was admitted to the hospital for three months, he was suffering from pneumonia. We were told by the doctors to pay 30,000 shillings for the treatment but we have not managed to do so till date. My husband and I are both jobless. This forced me to look for a laundry job at our nearby center so that I can raise the hospital bill. Therefore, financial crisis becomes the biggest hardship I have faced in my life."

"A decent education for my children has been my greatest desire and I have consistently struggled to ensure that, they are at school. With all my efforts, I am still worried about how I can manage to raise their school fees once they advance to secondary school since I have 3 who are in standard 8. My plan once I receive this money is to buy 10 goats for 3000 shillings each. These will reproduce fast and by the time they join secondary school, I will be sure of sorting them. Also, I will buy oxen that will help me upscale my farming to have food security in my household. For the second transfer, it will help my husband to start a livestock business to earn extra income for the family; sustaining basic needs like school fees. This will change our livelihood for the better, a transformation that I have wished for a long time."

"I live in a community where owning livestock is a sign of wealth and I have desired for a long time that I starting animal keeping. Due to the financial crisis, this desire has never come through and I have been living a life of regret. Receiving this money means a dream fulfilled since I plan to spend my first transfer to buy 4 indigenous dairy cows which I estimate to cost me $130 per cow. With time I will be able to milk them and sell within our village to get an income that can support my family's basic needs like food. On the other hand, I plan to use my second transfer to construct an iron-roofed house for myself because the one I currently have is grass-thatched, small, and at the same time used as a granary plus a kitchen. This will change my life's status quo and hence a better living."

"I have ended up selling 6.5 acres of my land and all the livestock I had to educate my six children. I no longer have land to cultivate, which forces me to engage in tedious casual jobs on people's farms to earn some income to buy food for my family. I am also a security guard in a nearby school where I earn $25 monthly. The most bitter pill to swallow is that after educating my three daughters, they ended up getting married without completing their studies, and my two sons who completed their studies one year ago have not yet secured employment, thus I still support them. This is the biggest hardship I face"

"Basically I don't have a stable source of income. As a result I lack food and other basic needs."

"I am so grateful i will receive this money. I will use it to buy food."

"Not having enough money to buy food for her entire household"