My goal this year was to expand my business. I wanted to add electronic equipments such as home theater to my business. I am planning to save part of the profit that I earn from the business towards the same and I am hopeful that I will achieve this by end of the year. Achieving this means that I will will be able to pay school fees for my children and live a better life.

What I liked about GiveDirectly is their independence. When they came to the village, they did their due deligence to establish the recipients who qualified their criteria without relying on information from local leaders.

For the last one year, our business(a local cyber cafe and a bookshop) was not doing well due to effects of inflation and that caused hard economic times.Since it is our only source of income, we spend most of the profit to pay school fees for our children and cater for basic needs and we were left less amount to add more stock. We were living in fear of seeing our business collapse because it's the only source of income we have known for years. We spend $400 of the second transfer to add more stock to our business and we have noticed an increase in income. Previously, we used to earn daily profit of between $2 to $2.5 and right now, it has increased to $5 a day. I spend the balance to buy food and I am grateful to GiveDirectly for saving my business from collapsing.

When I received a message from GiveDirectly that confirmed the receipt of my first transfer, I was very excited. I was with my kid at home and could not hold back my joy, but had to celebrate the receipt. I signaled my husband, who was far from home at that moment, and shared the great news.

The biggest difference in my daily life is the improved profitability of my business after adding a machine that has increased the services we are providing and thus the profit margin because of the increased sales.

In y household, we had depended on a book-selling business alongside printing services in the immediate shopping center. Since it has been the backbone of our finances, its profitability had been strained in the past few months since the stock kept dropping. On receiving the first transfer, I spent KES 47000 on restocking and also buying a new computer that is useful when typesetting and printing alongside other services we had been offering. I spent the remaining on foodstuff for my family of three and other kitchenware that was missing. I am glad that everything went as planned and hopeful to accomplish a lot when I receive the second transfer.