In the coming year, I hope to restart my small shop business which collapsed one year ago. I was forced to use all the capital that was running it to support the secondary education of the kid. In addition, accomplishing this will realize my dream of becoming self-reliant because I will no longer depend on my spouse for every family's financial needs.

In my opinion, Givedirectly did well in conducting meetings to train us about how the transfer could impact us before enrollment. Additionally, there was a close follow-up on the transfer to ensure there is a great impact on living conditions which is a nice thing. In my opinion, I do not see any improvement areas they need to work on to better the processes.

I spent the most recent transfers to clear the fee arrears for my kid. He was about to complete his secondary school education but was still having a huge fee balance. I used $150 to pay all the pending fees. My spouse is a motorbike taxi driver, a job that earns him just a peanut which is not enough to fully feed the family and support education for the 5 children. Similarly, I used $80 to pay part of the fees for the other 4 children who are still in primary school. In addition, I bought new pairs of school uniforms for my kids. This is because they were putting on old, worn-out uniforms when going to school which was very embarrassing. Currently, they are happy wearing new uniforms which makes them motivated. Lastly, I bought 3 goats as a future investment for my kids' education. I intend to sell them at a profit when they mature and multiply to further their studies.

The funds came through at around four in the evening when I still happened to be in the farm. Prior to receiving the funds,I was quite stressed out especially since my children were out of school and I had no money to send them back. So when I finally noticed that GiveDirectly had sent the transaction I felt a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders because it meant that I could finally sort our the financial troubles I was facing.

The biggest transition in my day to day life was definitely the fact that I could finally settle the debts in tuition fee that my children had especially because they were missing out in class. Apart from that, finally being able to sleep on a bed was a definite plus because the sisal bed was hardly comfortable to sleep in and I was doing so for close to four years.

As soon as I withdrew the transfers, I immediately decided to try and settle a debt in school fees for my children. Therefore I paid KES 20,000 in school fees for my daughter who was still in high-school and had been kicked out of school for close to five days. I also paid KES 8,000 in school fees for four of my children who were still in primary school because they had also been out of school for two days. Apart from that, I went ahead to purchase three goats for KES 9,700 because I wanted to grow my farm. I also used KES 9,500 and bought a bed and mattress because I used I had been sleeping on a sisal bed for close to four years now. I ended up using the rest of the transfers to cater for nourishment for my family and I.