Nutrition has been quite a challenge for me and my family especially due to the on going drought. Apart from the drought I barely have a job after I retired in accounting almost more than half a decade ago so this in turn makes it difficult to cater for some of our most important needs. My wife had to go ahead and work as nanny so that she could help the family in making ends meet. Luckily I also got enrolled to this program and when I received the recent transfers I went and bought a bag of maize flour that contained a dozen packets worth KES 1,800. I also used KES 600 and acquired sardines, cabbage, tomatoes, beans and cooking oil. After that I used KES 520 and bought six gallons of drinking water for two trip since water was scarce. Lastly I used the remaining KES 80 to purchase sugar.

In my opinion I appreciate the fact that GiveDirectly gives us a small portion of money and allows us to spend the way we want because we all have different needs,but in my own opinion I believe we all gifted in different ways I feel like GiveDirectly is supposed to allow the recipients to seek their opinions in terms of different projects.For instance I may have an idea on how to spent the next funds in terms of my needs but through analysis and expert information GiveDirectly could come up with an idea that is different in terms of spending and increasing my revenue because at the end of the day its about poverty eradication that's what I think you not doing well.

I am a peasant farmer with 10 children and i dependon farming.My 6 children are all grown but the remaining 4 are still at school. I am ailing from blood pressure and recently I have become partially blind which has made me not seek any employment but forced my wife to be a housemaid in mombasa.Lack of food has been the biggest challenge and all my transfers have been used to buy food.My wife earnings have now been channelled to pay for the high school children school fees and this has changed my lifestyle with my family.

I received the text message at around 9 am. I was in my house full of thoughts on what I would do to get food. My 2 small kids had already left for school and they did not eat anything. While seated in the house my phone vibrated. When I checked it out. I found out that I had received money from GiveDirectly. I quickly called my wife and shared with her the good news and went ahead and bought food so that when my children are back they will have something to eat.

The money made a big difference for me. I was going through a tough time in my life. With the money I used it to buy food for my family and currently I am happy we have food that we will feed on for the next few weeks.

I am a retiree. I have four kids who are in school. Two of my kids are in secondary school. My son’s fee is KSH 57000 per year, my daughter’s fee is KSH 21000 per year. I currently do not have a job. My health condition is currently not good. My wife is a house help and earns KSH 7000 per month. Balancing between paying school fees and doing other things with such kind of earnings is very hard. I depend mostly on bursaries for my children to continue with their education. When I was enrolled to the program and received the transfer, I was very happy. I spent the whole amount of KSH 1170 on buying food since I did not have any at that time and were it not for the transfer I would have slept hungry that day.