My new goal is to buy a water tank for fetching clean rainwater for my household use. Getting clean water is a big challenge in our area. We have constructed a small underground water reservoir that usually collects surface water for household and animal use. This water usually serves us a few days after the rains are gone and when they dry up, we are forced to go to the main river which is quite far and the water is not that clean. We have been hoping to buy a water tank for quite some time but we have not been in a position to since we have been struggling with the payment of school fees for our five children. Three who are in secondary school and two in primary school. Other than that, our other goal is to get money for paying school fees. We have been depending on farming where we usually grow crops such as maize and beans and we supply them to the schools where our children are studying for payment of school fees. Sometimes the crops, most especially the maize gets affected by some disease and hence it does not do well. When that happens, I am forced to look for casual work such as that of construction work to get money for paying school fees.

GiveDirectly did well because they changed our lives for the better with the transfers that they sent to us. They were not biased in their enrollment and hence no one who was meeting the selection criteria was left out. Everything went well and hence I do not see anything that I would recommend to them to change.

We spent KES 30000 of our recent transfer on buying a cow. We decided to buy the cow so that it can help us in the future when it calves. We can sell some of the milk and get money for paying school fees for our children. Buying a cow is something that we have been hoping to achieve for quite some time since we didn't have our own. The cow that we have been rearing is borrowed. With the remaining transfer amount, we spent it on paying school fees for our three children in secondary school. We subdivided it among them and although we didn't manage to clear school fees for the whole academic term for the three, we are glad that none of them was sent home due to the arrears. We are thus so much grateful to GiveDirectly for everything. May God bless you.

It was around 11:00pm and we had just retired to bed with my family when I heard my phone ring and on checking I was met with a pleasant message from GiveDirectly. I woke up my wife and shared the good news with her. She was so happy and informed me that we should get down to work since we already had plans. The next day we went to withdraw the money and we started implementing all our plans as agreed.

This money has brought so much positive difference in our lives. It has Sen us achieve things that we otherwise thought we could not achieve like buying a dairy cow that will see us produce milk for consumption as we get the surplus to make sales and make some income. It brought so much joy to my children too as they were able to get new clothes and we also bought cushions to make our chairs more comfortable. We are so much indebted and happy about GiveDirectly as a family.

We used KES 26000 to buy a young heifer and another KES 10000 was used to pay school fees for our children. The remaining amount was used to buy other basic household needs and food for the family. We chose to buy a heifer having used a lot of money in the recent past to buy milk for local consumption. We could not raise enough money from our subsistence farming and odd casual jobs to make such huge investments and we thank God that GiveDirectly helped us achieve these. We received the money when two of our children had been sent home for school fees and we were wondering where we would get the money to pay the fees.