I am planning to hire a tractor to assist in farming my piece of land of 10 acres, which is about kshs 50,000. I do subsistence farming for a living and when it is done by casual workers it is time-consuming and very expensive. I am expecting to have a good life, with the good rains I will harvest about 25 bags of maize and beans, of which I will use part of it for consumption while the rest will be for sale. I will therefore open a savings account for my children's school fees. This will help in paying school fees in advance and I am expecting them to have good grades which will be a factor when choosing the best courses to undertake in college education. I am having an additional goal of buying a brand-new motorcycle on loan. It costs kshs 400,000. This is meant for business purposes, especially during online deliveries.

In my opinion, what GiveDirectly does well in this program is that we receive the transfers in lumpsum amounts. This helps in planning as one is in a position to do something huge as compared to when the transfers are given in small instalments. The unlearned recipients are taught how to use mpesa. This has reduced the number of theft cases in the community as most of us managed to change our pins to a more secure code. To avoid household conflict, what needs to be done differently is enrolling all the individuals in the household. During enrollment, those individuals who did not have responsibilities by then were left out of the program yet these are the same people who steal from their old and vulnerable parents. Give Directly staff are very transparent during the enrollment process, they are so keen during the verification process and this ensures that none is left out during registration to the program. Another thing that needs to be done differently is enrolling all the communities in a specific village for uniformity purposes and this will prevent too many complaints coming from the communities that are left out during the registration to the programs.

I am a parent of three boys who are still in Primary school, they are in classes two, four and five. Before the GiveDirectly transfers, I never had any stable source of income and providing for my family had been the most difficult task I have ever faced. I used the whole transfer of kshs 53,000 to purchase a power saw for my business. Before I bought the machine I used to hire it from someone else and this was quite expensive as I remained with very little money for my family's basic needs like food, clothing and education.

It was around 9 PM when I was from taking my evening meal when my when started ringing continuously. I was curious because it was so rare for me to receive a message at that particular hour. However, upon checking my phone, I was shocked and happy beyond measure when I confirmed that it was an Mpesa message from GiveDirectly. I was so positive that I would achieve most of my goals from the transfers and move my life to the next great level.

The biggest difference in my daily life is that I am now sleeping in a new modern house. Previously, I used to shelter in a single-roomed house that could not accommodate my four children. It all started when my spouse passed on, six years ago, and ever since I uses to experience lots of conflicts with my in-laws, and I was forced to return to my maternal home. One of my brothers offered me his house that I have been sheltering since that day. The house was small as I had mentioned earlier and its' roof was very old. I had wished to renovate it but I could not afford it because I depended on the low-paying odd jobs to fend for my family. Therefore whenever it could rain, we had to seek shelter from my mother's house or opt to squeeze ourselves into one corner of the house. I am now a proud mother because I have finally been able to fulfill my biggest dream and I do not regret this decision ever. To be honest no amount of words can define how thankful I am.

I spent part of the first transfer on buying building materials which include twenty pieces of iron at KES 16000, the polls at KES 3000, nails at KES 600, and the labor costs of KES 3500. I had intended to construct a new house since the previous one was small and had an old roof. It is a relief to me and my family because we no longer have to worry about the rains which have been the biggest challenge. In addition to that, I paid fees of 2500 to my son who is still in primary school. I am glad that he has been attending his classes every day which his colleagues unlike before whereby he would stay home for weeks because of the arrears. With the remaining amount of money, I bought foodstuff for my four children which took us almost a month.