I am at peace that I no longer have to fret about providing education for my children, unlike before, when they were at risk of being sent home from school. Currently, all five of my children are enrolled, and I am relieved to have covered their fees as schools reopened. I spent $50 towards clearing the outstanding fee arrears and purchasing new school uniforms and stationery to ensure that they could seamlessly continue their studies. This has granted me a sense of peace as I look ahead to future payments. Apart from the educational expenses, I invested $40 in acquiring livestock—a goat and two ducks. Previously, I did not possess any livestock, despite recognizing their worth as valuable assets that I can now confidently care for. Acquiring these animals brings me great satisfaction, and my aim is to breed them and allow them to multiply. They serve as a financial safety net, ready to assist in times of need. I can rely on them to settle urgent financial requirements, including school fees for my children, or sell them to address unforeseen emergencies. I spent the remaining portion of the transfer on purchasing food supplies for my family. This ensured ample food was available in my household, enabling us to enjoy three meals daily without much struggle.

I am committed to ensuring that my children remain in school and receive a quality education. Despite not having a stable job, I engage in various casual activities such as fetching and selling firewood to make ends meet. Similarly, my husband works in casual construction, although the jobs are unpredictable and unreliable, sometimes leaving him without work for days. These financial uncertainties make it challenging for us to consistently cover our children's school fees. Consequently, we heavily rely on the transfers to meet other essential expenses, such as food. My priority is to pay their fees promptly to prevent them from being sent home due to a lack of fees. This will ensure that their education remains uninterrupted despite our financial constraints.

I am grateful for the invaluable support provided by GiveDirectly, which has made it possible for my four children to attend school without financial worries. To be honest, my husband and I have been grappling with the challenge of ensuring timely school fee payments. Despite our collective efforts, we consistently found ourselves burdened with substantial fee arrears. I am a subsistence farmer, while my husband, the primary breadwinner, relies on casual construction jobs. Regrettably, his earnings have never been sufficient to both sustain our family and cover our children's education expenses. Recently, with the financial assistance we received, I spent $70 towards settling my children's school fees. Witnessing them attend school without disruptions, unlike in the past, fills me with a profound sense of peace. Also, In pursuit of an income-generating venture, I invested $20 in purchasing four chickens, which I am currently raising. My ultimate aspiration is to establish a thriving poultry project, providing a stable source of income. These chickens can also serve as a financial safety net, ready to be sold in case of urgent financial needs, such as covering my children's educational expenses. Lastly, I utilized a portion of the funds for some much-needed household essentials and personal care items, including soap and other personal necessities that were lacking in our household.

Given my lack of a stable income source to guarantee the consistent payment of my four children's school fees, these transfers are my sole lifeline at the moment. To prevent them from frequently being sent home due to fee arrears, I am determined to allocate my transfers towards their education. My primary objective is to ensure they attain their educational aspirations, thus illuminating their future prospects. In addition to covering tuition fees, I also intend to invest in acquiring livestock, including chickens and goats, to rear and propagate. I recognize that by possessing goats and chickens, I can secure the future of my children's education even when the organization's support eventually diminishes. These assets can serve as a fallback plan, allowing me to sell them if a financial need arises, such as funding my children's education.

I have been spending my transfers in almost the same way monthly. I have 4 children in school with my oldest in Highs school, form two. I usually use the money in settling their school fees and buying food. I split the school fees among them. I spend $20 monthly paying for school fees $10 goes to cover school fees for my high school son and the $10 is divided equally among the three in primary school. I spend $10 on flour monthly which is usually 5 bags of maize flour of 2kgs each and $4 goes into buying the groceries that will be used in cooking.

I am a casual worker and my husband is a casual worker too. This means we have no steady source of income on which we depend on. I have four children who rely on us to ensure they eat, are clothed and get an education. This means that most of our transfers will go to helping us accomplish this needs. However I do hope that I can get a bountiful harvest from my crop which will mean that I will be able to redirect my fiances to saving so I can buy animals. I used to have animals but when the drought really hit I had to sell some of them to buy food and educate my children. I want to go back to animal farming as its such a good way to have an investment for future use as it multiplies.

Before receiving my recent transfer, we did not have food. I always struggle to look for casual jobs to raise money for my family's upkeep. However, December proved so hard, and getting any casual job was a toll order. Therefore, immediately after I confirmed my transfer, I spent $18 on food for my large family of eight members. Since I had some pending school fee arrears for my two school-going children, I spent $6 on paying part of their fees. Grace and Victor are both in grades 1 and 4 respectively. Lastly, I spent $10 on buying two hens with the hope of doing poultry farming as a supplement to my household's income in the future. It will be of great help because my husband is also jobless and rarely get any casual job to cushion our family expenses. As a result, my family bears extreme hardship.

I started building a new house last year which stalled for some time due to inadequate finances to buy the required materials. However, since I am now assured of getting my monthly transfers, my main objective is to bring this house to completion. I am planning to spend my transfers on buying the remaining materials every month and purchasing doors and fixing them. I have a young family and my priority is to accommodate them in my new house.

Four of my six children are currently enrolled in school. Paying their school fees has been difficult for me because the only source of income I had was from burning and selling charcoal in the nearby forest. When I received the transfers, I always prioritized clearing their outstanding school fees, which will be paid forward in the future. With the most recent transfer, I spent $15 on tuition fees for the three children in primary school and $5 on tuition fees for my son in secondary school. I also spent the remaining $10 on groceries that we had been sharing with the other seven members of my family. Receiving this money has been a relief, and it has made paying school fees and other expenses possible.

GiveDirectly did an excellent job in our community, for which we are eternally grateful. We received timely and ideal financial assistance because we were given the opportunity to decide how to spend it. I am currently relaxed and no longer stressed by the casual labor I used to do for a living. Everything was done well, and no one had any complaints about the GiveDirectly staff's approach.

As the household’s breadwinner, my husband takes on casual tasks in household construction to earn a living.  However, this work is not easy to come by, and he ends up working only three days a week, making no more than KES 1,500. Given the rising commodity prices, this sum barely covers food for our six children for the entire week. In reality, they had gone to bed hungry two nights before the cash transfer since there was no money.  So, I used the full transfer amount to buy food to last a few days while my husband raised money for more.

Two days before the transfer, my family had slept on empty stomachs consecutively due to a lack of money to buy food. However, the transfer transformed the narrative in my household that evening. I was able to obtain food and we have never lacked meals since then. I could not be more grateful to Give Directly.

I received a message alert at 4 p.m. when I was relaxing with my friend after returning from the stream where we had gone to fetch water. Since I cannot read, she offered to review the message contents for me and confirmed that Give Directly had sent me money. I was relieved because after sleeping hungry the night before, my children would have something to eat that evening.