My life is different than it would have been if I never received the transfers in that I have bought a heifer. I always buy milk daily from my neighbor and this is so costly for me. I depend on small scale farming and sometimes do casual jobs in the village. The amount that I get paid is so little. I hardly meet the basic household items and pay school fees for my children in various schools. When my cow reproduce I will be in a position to have enough milk for my family. I will sell the surplus milk to earn an income. I will be able to reduce the time for the casual jobs and devote much of my time doing dairy family. Owning a cow has given me hope in that I know in the next few months I will have cut the daily cost of buying milk. I am so happy because this was always my wish to own a dairy cow.

In my own opinion GiveDirectly does well by giving money to the poor in the village to build better houses and pay school fees for children. I do not find anything that GiveDirectly did not do well.

I spend the money I received from GiveDirectly to buy a heifer at a cost 20000ksh. This was always in my mind because currently the price of milk is high. I also used part of the money to pay school fees for my children in various schools. My children used to be sent home to collect the school fees and this was affecting their performance. The remaining amount I bought a piece of land at cost of 15000ksh. I will be able to do horticulture farming which has always been my dream. Finally I bought food for the family. I am so grateful because GiveDirectly has changed our living standard.

I was in the kitchen preparing lunch for my family when I heard an SMS notification on my phone. I stopped to check it and to my surprise, it was an M-pesa message saying that we had received the lump sum transfer from GiveDirectly. I rejoiced on seeing this and my children joined me in the celebration. I called my husband immediately who had gone out and I told him to come and check the SMS that I had received on my phone. He came by later and he was so happy on seeing the message. We celebrated together and gave thanks to God for gifting us with such a wonderful blessing.

The money from GiveDirectly has brought a lot of changes in my home. We now have more land for tilling. This will thus enable us to get more food that the family can consume. Having repainted the roof of our house, it now looks as good and new as the rest of the houses in my village. My husband’s carpentry business has also grown, he was able to buy wood that he can use in making the furniture. He will now hence be able to get more money from his business as compared to before where he was being paid for labor only. I am also now very happy having bought cushions for my chairs since guests visiting my household will have somewhere comfortable to sit on as we chat. Having bought some food with part of the transfer, I will no longer be having worries about what my children are going to eat, and hence they will not have to go hungry anymore. They now also have new clothes for themselves and they are very happy about this. Thank you GiveDirectly for making this happen.

The transfer from GiveDirectly helped us a lot. We were able to buy a small piece of land with part of the money. We also bought some paint that we used in repainting the roof of the house. The transfer also enabled us to buy some cushions for the chairs and my husband used some of the money to invest in his carpentry business. With the remaining amount, we used it in buying food and clothes for our children. We have always wanted to do the above things, especially buying more pieces of land and repainting the house but due to lack of enough money, we have not been able to do so. The little money that we have been getting from my husband’s business has been going to buying food, clothes for the children, and paying their school fees.