I do subsistence farming for a living. I am planning to start up a small business supplying maize to boarding schools. I usually do it although to homesteads on order. In the near future, I will be expanding and mostly the deliveries will be done by the motorcyclist as they will be in large quantities. The profits from the business will be taking care of my kids' school fees.

According to my opinion, what Give Directly does so well is that they give out unconditional transfers, different people have different needs, and we have the freedom how to spend the transfers so long as it is something that does not harm us together with community members. The transfers are given in lump sum amounts and this helps in planning purposes in terms of the developments that we would wish to engage in at a personal level. Unlike other projects where it is given in small amounts. 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. 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 children. Two are in Secondary School, a boy and a girl, while the other is in college studying Education in his first year. I used a total of kshs 20,000 to clear their school fees arrears that have accumulated for the past year. Before the transfers, I was living in a small grass-thatched house and it could not fit all my family members. Besides, it was leaking during the rainy seasons. The boys used to sleep in my neighbour's house and this was so inconvenient as they could go so early due to insecurity in my community as most homes do not have access to electricity. I used the remaining part of the transfers of kshs 30,000 to build a spacious decent house for my family. I am so grateful to GiveDirectly transfers

While at the shamba looking how my crops were fairing, I received a message on my phone. I remember it was around 4 pm but I did not bother checking since I do not know how to read. On reaching home, I informed my helper about it and he checked to see what kind of a message it was. What a message! This was the transfer of KES 55000.00 from GiveDirectly. My heart was filled with joy for receiving such an amount of money during a drought season. I perceived it as a miracle.

Initially, I was undergoing a hard situation in sourcing my family's daily food. Since I had no defined source of income, I find it too difficult yet it was a drought season. The money I received has been a big boost to my family as we have been having enough food since then to date. I am very grateful for the support I received because if it were not for GiveDirectly sending the transfers, maybe we would have starved of hunger.

Upon withdrawing the money, I opted to renovate my house because the walls on the front part had collapsed. I bought some cement and repaired the house. Thereafter, I bought two goats for KES 7000.00. I also opted to do some clothes shopping for my family since the kind of clothes they had were old. For the remaining amount, I opted to keep it for the family's upkeep because it was a drought season, and getting some food was a challenge.