Before receiving the money I wanted to build a house for my family and I because the house I was leaving in initially was a mud house and it was very small, plus my husband and I are both illiterate and old therefore could not afford any appliances to begin construction or even get a well paying job. Apart from that, my child was also in college and I had aspirations that we would get money so as to enable her to finish school and maybe in the long run be able to sustain herself and hopefully have a better future as compared to the one we had.

GiveDirectly has so have preceded my expectations because initially I thought it was all a hoax but through it I have experienced great acts of generosity and also repaired my belief in humanity.

The recent transfers enabled me to put my construction plans into action and so I managed to acquire one trip of sand at the moment for eight hundred kenyan shillings and also a single trip of bricks which cost me a thousand kenyan shillings. Since I have not began the construction yet, I also intend on paying for the manual labourer who will aid in the construction according to their fee. Also I catered for my daughters college tuition which cost me approximately twenty thousand kenyan shillings and I am grateful she managed to finish college at the right time.

I can still vividly remember5 it was around 8 in the morning when I was at my farm watering my vegetable(kales) when my mobile phone started ringing continuously. Since I couldn't read on my own I decided to go back home to seek assistance. My son took the phone and after checking, he realized that it was an Mpesa message from GiveDirectly. After receiving the good news we were all over excited becsue we knew the money will finally finish our long-time problems which we couldn't solve using our own cash.

I have been married for over twenty years and it has never been joyful especially this period that my children need to go to school. I have been the family's breadwinner since my spouse is very old he couldn't any longer be able to take care of us anymore. I have been relying solely on burning and selling charcoal in the local market which on a good day I could earn KES 250. With my eight family members, this could not sustain the family's basic needs. Therefore paying school fees for my three children who are in college and secondary school was a challenge. Most of the time I depended on the bursaries and the wellwishers to raise the fees which were not a guarantee. On most of the days, they were also home because of the arrears which could always affect their performance. I am now glad becasue I managed to send them back to school after clearing the whole balance for the two semesters. I could not imagine this would happen anytime soon and it still feels like a dream to me which I am happy to mention that has brought the biggest difference in my daily life.

I spent KES 35000 of my transfer on paying school fees for my three children, one on hid final year in college and the two in secondary schools respectively. Thus has been one of the major challenges that I have been acing for years considering I have been depending on buying and selling charcoal to make ends meet. I am glad they are now in school without any disturbances. To add to that I had a debt of KES 10000 for my neighbor which was for the piece of land I had bought on credit earlier. Later on, I used the remaining KES 10000 on buying food like maize floor, sugar, beans, vegetables, and other household basic items like decent clothes and chairs. We no longer borrow those of friends like we used to do back then.