Currently, I'm managing a charcoal business to support my six children, all of whom are in school. However, facing recent health challenges like chest pain, I've realized the need for a change. That's why I'm thinking of starting a vegetable business to ensure I can still provide for my children's needs. Using the money from my transfer, I plan to launch this new venture. Transitioning to the vegetable business, I aim to improve our financial stability and ensure my children's educational needs are met.

I shoulder the responsibility of caring for my six children, ensuring their basic needs such as food, clothing, and education are met. Before being enrolled in GiveDirectly, I earned a living by selling charcoal, a physically demanding job that took a toll on my health, resulting in frequent severe chest pains. Now, I heavily rely on the monthly transfers from GiveDirectly to support my family of six. I allocated $68 towards school fees for six children, ensuring they can continue their education without significant disruptions. Additionally, I set aside $30 in a savings group to invest in livestock to improve our quality of life. With the funds saved from the transfers, I have alaready acquired 1 cow and 7 goats, which I consider a significant and promising investment of buying a goat. The remaining $4 was utilized to purchase food for my family, ensuring that we never go without a meal. Despite the health challenges that limit my ability to work and generate income, I am immensely grateful for the financial assistance provided by the transfers. It has played a crucial role in enabling me to fulfill my role of providing my family's needs

In the coming year, my primary goal is to expand my charcoal burning business and boost my income. With the cash transfers I've been receiving from Givedirectly, I see an opportunity to invest in my business. I also plan to allocate a portion of the transfers to save for my family's future needs. The support from Givedirectly has been a game-changer, I am grateful for the positive impact these transfers have had on our life.

I spent $30 on buying a goat, seeing it as a potential source of income for the family. The idea was to rear it and exchange it for cash whenever there was a pressing need. It was a small but major step towards creating a sustainable source of income for our household. The thought of having a safety net brought a sense of security and relief. As Christmas was approaching, I allocated $30 to ensure my younger children experienced the joy of the season. I bought them clothes and special food, creating an atmosphere of celebration and warmth in our home. The remaining $34 was used to pay school fees for my six children, who attend both secondary and primary school. Education is a priority for us, and this support allowed us to secure their learning journey. Before the Givedirectly monthly cash transfers, our family struggled to make ends meet, relying on meager earnings from selling charcoal. With my husband facing intermittent job opportunities, the transfers became a lifeline, bringing not just financial stability but also a sense of happiness and gratitude to our household.

My children are my life and pride, my hope is to have them get to finish school. I believe this will allow them find opportunities they would not have sought after had they not had an education. I am planning to continue using my transfers to pay for their education to ensure firs the oldest finish their secondary school and undertake the national exams. I also hope to see a time where my younger children also get to secondary school. I am also planning to start saving to afford a goat worth $30. The goat will help build an animal heard that can act as an emergency fund for the family.

I am so thankful for the Givedirectly transfers as they have provided a lifeline for me and my family. My husband and I do not have formal employment and have over the years engaged in casual labour to ensure we could get our six children through school. My greatest desire was being able to have them go to school and finish school getting a formal education which will allow them seek better opportunities that we as their parents could. So from my monthly transfers $20 goes to my two oldest who are in form four and form one respectively where. I then divide the remaining in procuring food for our home since in the past months food has been a scarce commodity. In the month of August we spent an additional $10 on the younger children to ensure they could also go to school without a worry and this was only possible since we had harvested and have food.

I have currently planted maize in my farm with the aim of harvesting for food. I am hoping to harvest a sufficient amount that I hoped would be used for feeding the family. This will allow me to redirect the monthly expenditure on food to purchase goats and chicken for rearing. I want to be able to remember this project even once it comes to an end and also have an investement that will allow me to take my children to school and feed them.

My life is much more improved from where Giveidrectly first found me. I have been able to educate my children and even provide food for the family with the persistent drought that we were facing. I spent $10 in March and April on school fees while in may I spent $5. I also bought food in march worth $14 while in April I spent $4 and May I spent $9. I have also been able to buy chicken using the transfers at @2 for 5 chicken. I used the money to also prepare land for planting and for weeding once the planting was done. I spent $20 in April on tilling and planting and $20 on weeding in May.

I happen to have six children who are still pursuing an education, so keeping them in school is my top priority. I intend to use the organization's funds to cover any costs or debts incurred during their studies. Furthermore, as a consequence of the drought, at times me and my family go hungry, and so I plan on using these funds to cater for our nourishment, especially during those days when we have nothing to eat. I will also be very glad if I am able to buy a couple of farm animals, preferably a couple of goats and poultry, that will come in handy when I run out of cash and when we experience financial problems.

I am a mother of six children, and I struggle to raise their fees as well as support the family. Therefore, I rely on charcoal making to support them. My husband also does the same kind of job to support our large family. It is strenuous work and we are always physically drained. Sadly, at the moment we struggle more since our possible alternative source of income, subsistence farming has been hard-hit by drought. As a result, all our crops failed in the previous season, forcing us to do other unprecedented casual jobs, such as offering laundry services at very low pay to keep family. Immediately after I received the transfer, I spent $24 on food that lasted a week. I also paid school fees of $10 to help reduce the accumulated arrears they had. With the recent transfer, we witnessed great alleviation from hunger.

The organization has helped our community tremendously, people have opted for a sustainable solution like the goat rearing project which I am optimistic would lead them to a brighter future, I did not see anything that was not done well or things that needed to be corrected.

My husband is a local businessman who sells toothbrushes in the nearby centre, while on the other hand, I am a charcoal vendor and together we are blessed with six children. School fees have been our major priority because our children are all schooling, yet our source of income is not reliable. When we received the transfer from the organization, my husband and I agreed to use our transfer on buying paying the tuition fees for our children, where I spent $10. Secondly, I bought them and lastly bought enough foodstuffs worth $14. Paying school fees was a challenge before and they would send home my children to collect the money on most occasions, but this is no longer the same, thus I am grateful and relieved.

I was actually at home with my son when I heard the notification and since I'm not quite knowledgeable I passed the phone to him so that he would assist me in reading the message and that is when he confirmed that I had finally received the funds. Honestly speaking I was instantly elated because I really needed the money and as I had mentioned before we had gone a couple of days without having a meal.

In my case the funds really made a huge difference for me and my family especially because we had not had a meal for a couple of days and my kids are hungry I was hungry as well, it was a very stressful situation but I'm thankful I received the funds when I did because my family and I haven't skipped a meal ever since.

About two days before I received the money, my children have been kicked out of school that is why as soon as I realized the organization had finally sent out the transfers, I went ahead and used KES 600 to pay tuition fee for six of my children. I then decided to use the rest of the transfers which was KES 600 and bought three packets of maize flour, two kilograms of beans and lastly a kilogram of sugar because it had actually been three days we had gone without having a meal.