The new goal that I have at the moment is to support my seventh child's educational needs. Currently, he is in form one and was forced to drop out of school due to the huge fee arrears as a result of the high poverty levels in our family. Seeing him at home while his colleagues attend classes is something that always breaks my heart as a parent. Additionally, the drought conditions in our area as a result of climate change have made the situation worse. Every income I manage to get from the charcoal vending is spent on feeding the family.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly did well in helping poor households in society. Visiting each and every household that qualified according to the criteria and enrolling them in the program was something recommendable. The close interaction with the officers helped them to know the problems we are facing. I do not have anything that the organization did not do well, I want to thank it for the transfers.

For 3 years since my 2 children completed secondary school, they had not been able to get their certificates despite them passing well. This is because they had huge fee arrears of $300 which need to be paid something that was making them not to join colleges. This was giving me sleepless nights as a parent. After receiving the transfer, I used $ 300 to clear the fees arrears, I am currently happy together with my kids after they finally obtain their form 4 certificate with the help of the transfers. With the remaining amount of $230, I used it to purchase sufficient food for the family of 6 members. It has been over two years now since we harvest enough food from our firms due to lack of rain. Climate change had made it hard for me to get food for the family since the charcoal-burning activity I am depending on is no longer sustainable. We could hardly have two meals per day due to the low supply of food leading to high food prices.

I live in a small and squeezed house together with my wife, as my children have their own house. For a while now, I have wanted to improve our situation by building a three-room house. So, as I was preparing the logs that I will use for the construction, I got a message that confirmed I had received funds from give directly. This filled me with so much gratitude as it will help in facilitating the materials I need for the construction and I will also be able to raise the amount for the labor cost.

There has been a great difference in my life as we can now consistently put food on the table, unlike before, where there were days when we were forced to sleep hungry as there was no food in the house. This often happened when I never got to make any sales in my work as a traditional palm wine brewer. Whatever earnings I made; I would always dedicate it to the children's school fees. I was also able to improve my livestock farming by adding two goats to the 13 I hard making the total count 15.

With the need to improve my life in mind, I used the funds to buy 20 iron sheets which will help in the construction of the house my wife and I will live in as it is yet to be completed. To improve my livestock farming business, I added two goats to the other five that I have. We had also run out of food in the house, so, I opted to buy a sac of maize. I then paid my 2 children's school fee arrears of KES 14000 so they would be allowed to collect their high school final exam results that will help them join the university. I was unable to raise this because my earnings as a traditional palm wine brewer are not much. On a good day, I make KES 300 per day. Similarly, I also bought the other two children some books and paid their school fees.