"My desire has always to own a dairy cow since I normally buy milk for home consumption which is costly. I normally buy one litre a day which cost 0.3 USD. Raising a family single handedly and being a casual laborer, getting at least 2 USD a day is hard to come by. I am therefore planning to buy a dairy cow which I will be able to sell some milk and use the remaining for home consumption."

"Before , I had lost hope of building my homestead and putting up a decent house in it . This is because the income from causal jobs that we did as a living was meager to support such projects . My husband had to ignore the requests from the elders of having a homestead as the customs required him to do so since he was the eldest . Having his homestead would permit his younger brother to build theirs as well . Today, we stay in a newly built house at our homestead with the courtesy of GiveDirectly. I am proud we have new iron roofed house like the rest of my village members ."

"My life is different from how it was in that, my burden has reduced. I normally sell milk to supplement the amount that I get from selling farm produced to take care of my daily needs. I can also sell some when emergencies arise. I am glad that I do not depend on farming alone."

"When I was in high school,my parents were struggling alot to pay school fees for me and two of my siblings.Being peasant farmers,they could not afford to pay for a boarding school for me hence I had to go to a nearby day secondary school.During weekends,my siblings and I would harvest firewood and take to school using wooden carts to cater for our fees.This was always tiresome and consumed a lot of time that I would have spent studying.It was a difficult four years but it was the only available option if we wanted to proceed with our studies.This paid off eventually since I was able to pass and proceed to the University through the Government sponsored program.This is the biggest hardship I have faced."

"I was awakened by the loud vibration from the phone at around 6;30 am. I was a bit shocked, but then I decided to check who had sent the message at such an hour. I realized it was an mpesa message from GiveDirectly. I was so happy and I immediately started to celebrate with my family. I went around waking them up because I couldn't contain the joy of receiving the good news."

"I have been using old mats as my bedding. Even though they were not comfortable, I didn't have a choice since I didn't have enough money to buy a bed or a mattress. When I received the transfer, I bought new bedding. I bought a new mattress and a new bed. At least I could now enjoy a comfortable sleep unlike before. To me, having a place I could sleep comfortably is the biggest difference in my daily life."

"The biggest difference in my daily life is that I am now a proud owner of a dairy cow. This is an asset that I can always rely on in case of a financial crisis in my family. It had always been my prayer to own one but had not been able to due to insufficient finances. I am hoping that this cow will be calving soon and I will be able the save the money I would otherwise use in buying milk. Also, I will be selling milk to my neighbors and earn an income. I will be using this money to pay for my children's education. I am grateful to GiveDirecty for enabling me to achieve this as it would not have been possible on my own."

"The fact that I now have my own goats in my own homestead is the biggest difference in my daily life. I opted to buy them because they would help me in paying school fees for my children. They are still in primary school, I know by the time they reach secondary school they will have multiplied hence making it easy for me to pay their secondary fees. I will be able to take them to higher learning institutions without even straining."

"For a long time, I wanted to own a motorcycle but I was not in a position to buy one due to financial constraints. I can remember envying people on the road that had a motorcycle. When I was enrolled in the program I was very happy since I knew that I was going to own a motorcycle. When I got the first transfer, I used the money to take a motorcycle. The third and the last transfer was not any different. I decided to pay for KES 45000. With this, I am only remaining with KES 40000 and I will be done repaying the loan. I cannot complain because I have been using the motorcycle to ferry people around and get money for my daily use. This is better that have been doing menial jobs that were unreliable. Besides that, I decided to save the remaining amount for the Christmas season."

"Currently, I have not planned for the next six months because my main objective now is on the four months to buy a heifer."