I am a widow and the only breadwinner in my family. My eldest son completed his secondary education and is yet to join college to continue with his education. I am not financially stable because I do not have a job. I have been surviving by working on manual jobs such as burning charcoal for sale. The little I earn is only enough to feed my family and I have nothing left to save or even take my children to school. When I received my transfer, I saved KSH 1000 of the money in a Chama. Through the Chama, I will get a loan and pay the required amount to enroll my son into college. I then spent the remaining amount of money in buying maize flour, sugar, beans, tea leaves, washing detergent and water. Because of the drought, it’s challenging to harvest food from the farm and I have to buy all the food from the shop and water at very high prices.

In my Opinion, GiveDirectly does well in terms of helping the needy in society. Many people are very happy due to the help they have received from GiveDirectly. The tough times have affected almost every household making life unbearable. Through the help that we have gotten, we can uplift our lives.

I have a son who finished his secondary education and passed very well. Due to financial challenges, I was not able to take him to college. Well, he then opted to engage in manual jobs to raise money for his college. He is very passionate about joining college and continuing with her education. To support him in his quest to continue with his education, I decide to join a Chama where I will save enough money, get a loan and enroll him in college. When I received the transfer, it gave me a huge boost towards my savings in the Chama. I spent KSH 1500 from the transfer as savings. I also spent KSH 1000 to buy food for my family. My food stock in the house was getting finished and I had to buy more food. Before receiving the transfer I had incurred a debt of KSH 500. The situation was very tough and I went ahead and bought some food on credit for my family. When I received the transfer I used part of the money to clear the debt I had.

I felt happy because I had completely forgot about the program and that they were going to be sending money to help us in our day to day lives and so I was surprised they actually kept their word and were true to what they had promise and informed us about.

As of now,it is the help I received in settling almost half of the debts I had which was a huge help but in the near future I plan on sending my child to college so that they can acquire some skills that would later on help them in life and enable them to be sustainable in their life.

When I received the money at that time I had otstanding debts from loans that I had taken previously so that I could get fare to help my son travel so when the money came in I had an pending debt of KES 1500 and after the money I paid with the KES 1200 I had received and thankfully I was left with only a balance of KES 300 that I planned on finishing.