My new goal is to start a small business. I normally rely on my masonry work to raise income that helps me support my family and all its needs. This work is normally affected by seasons where we may go for a long time without work making it hard for me to make substantial income. It is for this reason that I am thinking of opening an industry shop that will help me in diversifying my sources of income. This will not only make it easy for me to pay school fees for my children but also make it possible to meet other needs quite easily. I am a father of four and three of my children are in the level of secondary education with one already in college hence the need to make more income. How I plan to do this is by saving up enough money from my masonry work to be able to start up this business.

In my opinion GiveDirectly did very well by giving us aid in form of cash and giving us the freedom to choose what to spend on. This was so good since everyone was able to spend the money in a way that benefitted them the most.

I used KES 30000 to buy iron sheets for building our house, KES 15000 to pay school fees for my children and the remaining amount of KES 10000 to buy food and other basic household needs for my family. We received the money when we had started building our house and we were left with roofing and money to pay for labour. My masonry work had also been on an involuntary pause and getting money to pay school fees had been a little bit hectic. These funds came to my rescue and I am happy that my children were able to stay in school uninterrupted.

It was around 10 am and I had gone out to do some casual work at a construction site in the nearby town. As I was going about with the job, I heard my phone ringing in my pocket. I stopped to check it and to my surprise, it was an SMS saying that I had received KES 55000 in my mobile money account. I was so happy on seeing this that I could not continue with the job that I was doing. I excused myself telling my fellow workers that I had gotten an emergency at home. I called my wife immediately after leaving as I headed back home and I told her about the good news. She was so happy, we celebrated together when I got home as we talked about how the transfer is going to change our lives for the better.

The transfer has brought a very big difference in our lives as a family. We were able to construct another modern house, something we never thought we will be able to achieve since we didn't have the money to do so. We now hence have a nice house which is just like that of our neighbors.

We spent most of the transfer money on constructing another house. We had always wanted to construct another modern one, that one is made of wooden planks just like that of our neighbors. The one that we have been living in had grown old and it was made of mud. We were however not in a position to construct one before because we didn't have the money to do so. We are farmers and we also at times engage in doing casual work to earn a living. The money that we get from our income-earning activities, most of it usually goes to the payment of school fees for our four children and some to the purchase of food. We are hence so much grateful to GiveDirectly because they enabled us to achieve our dream.