Having received the first transfer, We used it to buy a dairy cow. Our new goal at the moment is to accumulate enough money through selling the cows once the dairy cow reproduces and using the money collected to buy a piece of land. We live in a very small piece of land currently and getting our hope is to buy an additional piece that will give us more space to practice agriculture. We are very optimistic that this shall be achieved as soon as the dairy cow that we bought reproduces and we get to sell the calves to make income.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does very well by giving cash as a form of aid. This gives everyone a chance to choose what exactly to spend the money on without any hindrance whatsoever. Looking at the cow that we bought with the transfer gives me much joy as a parent. It is an asset we have always longed to have but which we hav never had because of lack of enough money.

I used $100 to buy food for my family. I am a mother of seven and we got to receive this money at a time that we were facing a serious food crisis. Getting the money was a huge relief to us as a family and we could not debate on this since it was a common need within the family. We then used another $300 to buy iron sheets and other building materials for building a house that we had agreed to build once we get the second transfer. We were living in a very small house that that did not give us the much needed comfort and we had never really been able to raise enough money to be able to build one until we received money from GiveDirectly. We normally rely on odd casual jobs that allows us to just meet the needs of the family and sometimes may not earn us just enough to buy food. We then used the amount that remained to buy goats for rearing. The goats shall be instrumental in enabling us meet other needs of our family in future including payment of school fees for our second born child who is joining secondary school as from next year. We are so grateful to GiveDirectly for the support that we received.

It was early in the morning and I was about to wake up when I heard my phone ringing notifying me of an incoming new message. I reached out for it and I checked to see what the SMS was all about. I was pleasantly surprised when I read the SMS which was saying that I had received KES 55000 in my mobile money account. I was so happy that I immediately informed my husband and children of the good news. They were so happy to hear about it and we celebrated together giving thanks to God. We then prepared ourselves to go withdraw the transfer so that we could come and spend it on what we had planned.

The biggest difference that the transfer has brought into our lives is that the daily budget costs have been reduced. This is because, with the cow that we bought, we no longer incur the cost of buying milk. We also managed to buy two bags of maize for our consumption, and hence we no longer incur the cost of buying it daily.

We spent KES 35000 of our recent transfer on buying a cow. We decided to buy it because we didn't have one and it has always been our desire to own it. We hence didn't have a source of milk and we have been incurring the cost of buying some, where we usually buy a liter every day at KES 60. This amount of milk is little and it is only enough for preparing tea. The children have thus been lacking milk for their consumption. We were not in a position to buy a cow before because we didn't have money. We do not have a stable source of income and hence we usually depend on casual jobs to earn a living.The money from the casual jobs is little and it is only enough to purchase daily maize and milk for our consumption. Other than the above, we also spent KES 5000 on buying a sheep. We bought the sheep so that it could help us in the future when it reproduces and multiplies in number. We also bought two bags of maize for our consumption at a total cost of KES 7200. With the remaining transfer amount, we spent it on buying clothes for the children. We are thus so much grateful to GiveDirectly for everything.