I depend on subsistence farming which has not been reliable for some time now due to harsh climatic conditions. My husband depends on any available casual work and being that he works far from home, he spends most of his salary on his house rent and food. Due to this, we've not been able to accomplish a lot in life since we have four children in school. Currently, I do not have any new goal since I want to concentrate on building a three-room house for my family before thinking of something else. Accomplishing this will give me so much joy and satisfaction and I'll be at peace living knowing that the GiveDirectly's transfer impacted my life positively.

I do not have a house of my own and I have been living with my mother in law since I got married. The coming of GiveDirectly to my village gave me hope that I would finally live in my dream house. Recently, I have been purchasing the required building materials in bits. With my most recent transfer, I used $ 50 to purchase five pieces of iron sheets and $34 on timber. In addition, I spent $ 20 to pay school fees for my children so that they would not be sent back home and used the remaining $ 4 on food. I am happy that my dream of building my dream house will soon materialize. This is because I already bought enough timber and iron sheets are the only materials remaining aside from paying for labor.

My goal is to successfully complete the construction of my house and rear livestock. My focus mostly would be investing in goat rearing. I believe they are beneficial. After that, my plan is to purchase cows specifically for ploughing purposes. The cows will facilitate and easen our ploughing process given that I cultivate my 3-acre piece of land. They will also be a source of income generation when I rent them out for ploughing. In addition to this, I will also keep dairy cows as a source of milk.

I am currently in the process of constructing a house, after my house collapsed due to strong winds. The unfortunate incident coincided with my enrollment day, a fact that the GiveDirectly officer and I shared a laugh over. Following that incident, I've been gradually acquiring building materials, and with the last transfer I purchased a pair of iron sheets for a total of $20. I'm pleased that my life is undergoing positive changes due to receiving this transfers. My family has really encouraged and supported this process. With five children in school, I have to ensure their school requirement are catered for. I allocated $10 for Two of them whose uniforms were in a bad state, since we had settled the outstanding fees balance from the previous term. With the remaining $4 I was able to buy food for the household.

Ever since my house collapsed, my family occupied my mother-in-law’s space, which motivates me to build a new structure. In fact, I wish to build a more spacious one with three rooms that will accommodate my growing family of five children, my husband, and me. As my husband supports the daily basic needs of our family such as school fees and food, I on the other hand assemble the building materials for the new house. So far, I have bought 30 pieces of iron sheets. Once I have acquired enough, I will start buying bricks and then later hire someone to build the shelter to completion. I plan to spend my next cash transfers on this project to completion.

When my daughter completed elementary school last December, she was unfortunately unable to secure a chance in secondary education. This never discouraged her pursuit of more studies, as she immediately started planning to join a hair-dressing training college. Through the support of the cash transfers, I was able to pull enough funds by February to send her to college. Am happy that she has been recording exponential progress in her training. After that, I embarked on spending my cash transfers on iron sheets, an initiative I had taken up through the earliest transfers. I want to build a three-room house made of brick walls and a tin roof. After my house collapsed last year, my five children and I moved into my mother-in-law's house, where we have been staying to date. I would be happy to construct a house that will provide enough space and privacy for everyone. So in March and April, I spent $30 from each transfer to secure three iron sheets. The remaining $4 went towards the purchase of sugar for breakfast.

My goal this year is to construct a decent three-roomed, mud-walled, irony-roofed house for my family of 6 children. Since our shelter collapsed last year, it forced us to seek shelter from our neighbor's house something that has deprived us of our privacy. I have been purchasing the required building materials since I started receiving the transfer. At the moment, I have 20 iron sheets and hoping to complete the construction by the end of the year.

My husband and I both work on casual jobs. I make a living by selling charcoal and occasionally growing crops on my farm. My husband performs manual labor in Mombasa town by pushing a cart to sell tap water and carrying bulky items to the market. The job we undertake are short term contract jobs that last to a maximum of two weeks, so eventually I'll be out of a job and out of money to support my family. The oldest of my three children, who attends Ikanga Primary School, just finished her primary education and will begin secondary school in the coming academic year. I made the choice to spend my most recent transfer on a $30 goat. In the event that I need money to cover my children's school expenses, I can rely on the goat as a future investment. It will multiply and double my initial investment in a few months. With the last $4, I finally bought two packets of maize flour. This increased the amount of food already in the house and made sure that my family would never go hungry.

My home fell after weighty breezes blew the grass-covered rooftop away. The mud walls of the house created tremendous breaks and the whole house fell not many days after the fact. We fabricated a temporary design to shield us as we set up assets and constructed another house. When I received my transfer, I purchased two bits of iron sheet at KES 2000. Purchasing the iron sheets is the most vital move towards building a three-bedroom house that is open and will oblige every one of the eight individuals from the family. Other than purchasing iron sheets, I purchased nourishment for my loved ones. As a family, we were exceptionally poor monetarily and had no means to purchase our next meal subsequent to depleting the last stock of food we had.

The whole of the GiveDirectly process is great. They ensured we are informed about the project by conducting a community sensitization. This was followed by a household visit from their officers who respectfully responded to our concerns, and we later received our cash directly in our Mpesa account as was promised. This improved our level of confidence in them as an honest and trustworthy organization.

I have four children who are in primary school and two of them had torn school attire. Since they are soon resuming school from the long holidays, I had to make them ready for school. I, therefore, used KES 1500 to buy the school attires and books. I am glad they will report to school on time, unlike the previous years when we could not afford their school requirements. My spouse is a bus conductor in town, but he complains that whatever he earns is not enough to meet our needs while I sell small fish where I make little profit. In most cases, I end up spending part of the capital and this made the business to be unstable. I have saved KES 1500 for their school fees.

I was at home cooking some porridge for my children. This is what they had been having for 3 days now. My husband had not made any money the whole of that week. So, when the funds came in, my heart skipped for joy. I immediately stopped preparing the porridge and I rushed out to buy some maize flour and sugar. We had healthy meals that day. Seeing how happy my children were was so far the best day I had ever had.

Normally my husband sends me between KES 500 to KES 1,000. However, this is usually not consistent as his earnings are unstable. So, whenever we exhausted it, it would usually result in buying food on credit, or I would borrow from my neighbors. This all changed when I started receiving these funds. It has been a while since I had debts. So, there has been a great difference in my life ever since I started receiving these funds.

My husband works both as a casual laborer and a businessman. His earnings are unstable. This has made it quite challenging when it comes to the provision of our five children. I, on the other hand, I'm a housewife. On this day, we did not have food in the house so when I received the money from give directly, I used it all to stock my house with some nourishments.