My greatest wish is for my grandchildren to complete their education and find good jobs. That, I believe, is the only way to ensure they have the best lives possible. In addition, I pray that God will keep me alive until all of my children have decent jobs and can support themselves and their families.

GiveDirectly shines when it provides unconditional assistance. They have enabled me to achieve so much and change my life. I am grateful and can only hope that they will continue to do so for countless others in the future.

I am the mother of six children in various stages of development. My three eldest children are all married and have two or more children. My fourth and fifth children both work in Mombasa, while my youngest has just graduated from high school and is looking for work. I say this to demonstrate to you how much I value education. As a result, a portion of the GiveDirectly funds were used to pay school fees for four of my grandchildren at Migumomiri Primary School. I also decided to try my hand at cattle farming for the first time and purchased a female cow. The most significant project as a result of the GiveDirectly funds was the construction of my one-bedroom house. I also made a point of including a a verandah in the plans to ensure that I have somewhere to sit on warm evenings and sunny afternoons. The most recent major purchase was food. Growing cassava, maize, and other cereals on a 3-acre farm has been impossible due to the ongoing drought. As a result, I must ensure that we have enough to last as a family.

Since I am not quite literate, when I received the funds at first I barely noticed until I asked my trustee who was my daughter to help me by reading out the details of the notification that I had just received. Shortly afterwards she informed that the transfers from the organization had finally come through. To say I was happy, would definitely be an understatement because the joy I felt was hardly explainable.

I really appreciate receiving the transfers when I did especially because I could finally settle the debt in tuition fee that I had and my children were finally able to go back to school after staying home for close to a month. I was devastated when they kept missing school and so were they.

Upon receiving the funds, my first concern was that I made sure to finally renovate my house especially because it was quite aged and the roofing needed replacing as well. So I bought iron sheets worth KES 5,000, four bags of cement for KES 2,800 and paid the labourer KES 3,000. I also ended up paying KES 5,000 in school tuition for my four children because they had been out of school for a month and used KES 3,000 to purchase them new school uniform because most of their old uniforms were worn out and torn. Apart from that I used KES 2,000 and paid somebody to help me plough my land because I was sick at the time and could not do it myself. Since my husband and I were ailing, I went ahead to use KES 2,000 to pay for our medical bill. Lastly I used KES 3,000 to purchase a brand new mattress and KES 1,000 to buy two chairs. As for the rest of the money I used it to ensure we always had a meal because starving was among the challenges we faced as a family.