I had a problem with water in my place. For the last five years, I have been looking for water about 2km away from home. Because of financial constraints, I could not buy a tank to harvest enough water during the rainy season. My new goal was to buy a 5000 L tank in order to arrest my water issues.

Give Directly has done well, in ensuring that no one in the village was skipped but visited and enrolled in the support program. The unbiased decision to have everyone in the village was something that made them stand out. I don’t have any other recommendations.

After sorting out my water issue with my first transfer, that is buying a tank and putting up gutters to collect rainwater. My second transfer of KES 37,000 was used to buy a dairy cow, which currently is helpful because I can trade in the extra milk I get after my consumption. I used KES 10,000 to fence my compound to ensure that my cow doesn’t go grazing on my neighbor’s farm and also to tighten security for my home. The remaining amount was spent on food and clothing for my family of seven members.

It was 6 am and we had just woken up when I thought of checking my phone. I found out that I had a new message and on opening it, I was surprised to find out that it was a message from my mobile money provider telling me that I had received KES 55000 in my account. I was so happy on seeing this and I showed my wife the message bearing the good news. She was so excited too and we thanked God. We then started wondering and asking ourselves what time could have the SMS been sent since we didn't hear the phone ringing. On checking it, we found out that it was sent at 10:55 pm the previous night when we were already asleep. All in all, we gave thanks to GiveDirectly since we knew that the plans we had made were now going to be fulfilled.

The transfer has brought a very big difference in our lives as a family. We were able to buy the cow that we had always desired to have for a long time. We thus now have milk for our consumption and we even sell 2 litres daily. We usually milk 4litres in the morning where we consume 2litres and sell the rest. In the evening we also milk 2 litres. We thus no longer incur the cost of buying milk, we have also been able to make money too from the milk sale. The money that we are making from the sales, is helping us in paying school fees for our two children.

We spent most of the first transfer money on buying a cow. We bought it at KES 37000. Buying the cow was our topmost priority since we didn't have a source of milk for our consumption. We hence used to incur the cost of buying milk where we used to be supplied with 2 litres daily at KES 40 per litre. We could then pay the total sum at the end of the month. We had always desired to buy a cow but due to financial constraints, we were not in a position to. My wife and I are both teachers and the money that we are making has been most of it going to the construction of our house. We have thus not had money to do other things since we had decided to finish the house first. Other than the cow, we also spent KES 8000 on buying gutters and installing them, and with the remaining amount of money, we used it in buying a bag of maize and the household shopping. We are so much grateful to GiveDirectly since with the cow, we now have milk for our consumption and hence we no longer incur the cost of buying milk.