My life is different than how it would have been if I never received the transfers in that I have bought a dairy cow. I used to buy milk daily and this was so costly for me. I do small scale farming and the harvest that we get is only for consumption. We rarely get surplus to sell to meet other basic household needs. Buying a dairy cow was nearly to impossible. I had no extra money or saving to buy dairy cows. My main aim was to provide food for the family and pay school fees. When I received the second transfer I found it Worth to invest in dairy farming project. Currently I no longer buy milk because I have enough for my children and I sell the rest to earn an income to pay school fees. I am so happy because my children are no longer sent home to collect the school fees like before. I have devoted much of my time on this project. I hope to improve it and own good breeds in the near future. This will be the main source of income.

In my opinion GiveDirectly does well by giving money to the poor in the community to build better houses and to buy dairy cows. I do not find anything that GiveDirectly did not do well.

I spent 350 dollars of the second transfer on purchasing a dairy cow. I used to buy milk daily and this was so costly for me. I also spent 100 dollars to buy poles and fencing wire. This enabled me to fence my farm and prevent cows from destroying my crops. I also paid 50 dollars for school fees for my children in primary school. The rest of the money I bought food and clothes for my family members. I am so grateful for the support because GiveDirectly has changed our living standard .

I was really thankful and happy at that moment of confirmation of the message notification when I received the first transfer. Knowing that the promise we had been given in the past few weeks was finally honored was a great feeling. In some way, it was a surprise to me even though I was expecting it. Such a huge sum of money has never been in my possession at any one time since I was born, and I was afraid that handling and accounting for it might not be possible to me but still, I was excited that it was finally in my account.

After spending a lot of money over a long period of time in obtaining milk from our neighborhood, we now produce enough from our livestock and even surplus to also sell to the nearby eateries. This is a great milestone and the biggest difference in my daily life since all the worries I had been having are no more. As a household, we have managed to clear all the debts we had after obtaining some goods on credit when our daily income could not gather for all household needs.

After receiving the first transfer, it was already clear in our budget how best we were going to spend it as a household. Top on our list was a need to ensure that we bring in two good breeds of cows. With the heightened prices of livestock in the nearby market on the realization that we had received some money, I managed to purchase one lactating cow worth 27,000KES and a heifer worth 19,000KES. It has been long since we enjoyed milk from our own livestock as we had been relying on the purchase from our neighbors. This was so expensive and an opportunity to finally have our own was finally with us. I spent the remaining amount on buying enough foodstuff and also clothing for our children.