Our aim as a family has always been to educate our children to the level they wish to attain despite the financial challenges that we have been facing. Having used our recent transfer to pay school fees for my daughter who was joining college, I do not have any new or additional goals. This is because I want to support my spouse in educating our children so that none of them will drop out of school due to a lack of school fees. I am glad that we were able to purchase a dairy cow using our first transfer and the money that we will get from the sale of surplus when it calves will help us in achieving this.

In my own opinion, GiveDirectly does well in uplifting the lives of people in society and giving them hope in life again. Through the financial aid that we received, we were able to achieve most of our goals like buying livestock, building houses, and paying school fees for our children. I do not see anything that they do not do well.

We are subsistence farmers and after selling all our livestock to see our children through school, we resorted to buying trees, making firewood from them, and delivering them to school instead of paying school fees. Due to financial constraints that we were facing, our daughter had stayed at home for four years without joining college since we were concentrating on educating her siblings who are still in secondary and primary levels. When I received my second transfer, I spent KES 38000 to pay for her college fee and used KES 4000 to pay school fees for my son who was joining secondary school. I spent the remaining KES 10000 on three sacks of maize and some utensils that I did not have.

I felt so good about receiving the first transfer that I had to immediately informed my husband who was out and was also excited. It was early in the morning as we were taking our breakfast when I received a notification confirming the receipt of the transfer. This was a great opportunity to finally initiate new projects we had been hoping and planning since the first day we were enrolled in the program.

Obtaining a cow after a long period of buying milk from the neighborhood is so far the biggest difference in my daily life. It has brought back the hope of producing enough milk like we used to do before both for our household usage and also a surplus for sale. I am grateful to GiveDirectly for this great opportunity that has changed my perspective in life once again. Currently, I have a feeling that I am soon getting an extra source of income instead of paying other farmers who had been supplying us with milk.

After selling all the livestock that we had to cater for the school fees for my children. Receiving the first transfer was a great opportunity to start again by obtaining a heifer at KES25000. I was lucky to get a good breed and a potential milk producer that I am hopeful to depend on with my family in the future. I also paid KES 10000 on school for my only daughter currently in a secondary school as she had been undergoing a lot of frustrations being sent home and missing a chance to sit for her examination after studying for the whole term. This clearance of her school fees will give her ample time to read and compete favorably with her classmates. I also had to start sourcing construction materials with the plan to construct a new house to replace the current one that is so old. Since I already had trees in my compound I spent only KES 5000 on cutting them down and sawing them to obtain timber. With the remaining amount, I used it in household shopping of two mattresses and also foodstuff for the household.