We check in with people at each stage of the cash transfer process to see how things are going. Take a look at some of their stories as they appear here in real-time.
Learn more about how recipients opt in to share their stories.
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2nd Payment
Transfer Amount
53150 KES ($442 USD)
access_time over 1 year ago
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How is your life different than it would have been if you never received the transfer?
My new goal is to be able to take one of my child through his secondary school education. He is currently doing his standard eight and next year he will be joining secondary school. My commitment is to see him go through secondary school without lacking school fees or anything thereof. I operate a small restaurant that was boosted by support from GiveDirectly and I intend to use the money to be able to take him through his secondary education.
In your opinion, what does GiveDirectly do well, and what does it not do well?
In my opinion GiveDirectly did very well in offering all of us support unconditionally and without any form of biasness in doing so. I never saw any form of discrimination from the officers enrolling us and this was so commendable. I did not see anything that I thought could be of concern or should be rectified from any of the GiveDirectly staff. Everything about the enrollment process was quite smooth.
What did you spend your most recent transfer(s) on?
I used KES 32000 to buy a dairy cow and used the remainder to improve my restaurant business by paying a whole years rent worth KES 12000 for the business premise. The amount that remained was used to buy food for my family. I feel so much happy and grateful to have received the transfer from GiveDirectly since it has been life changing to me. My business is now quite stable courtesy of the transfer and I also have additional livestock that has empowered me financially.
Initial Payment
Transfer Amount
55000 KES ($481 USD)
access_time 2 years ago
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Describe the moment when you received your money. How did you feel?
That afternoon, I was busy serving my customers in my hotel. At a few minutes to five, I decided to check on my phone. To my surprise, I confirmed to have received KES 55,000 from GiveDirectly. I was very happy and this motivated me to continue serving customers with soup, beef, and Ugali because that's my specialty.
Describe the biggest difference in your daily life since you started receiving payments from GiveDirectly.
The biggest difference in my daily life I building an Iron roof within a very short time. This is because I had desired to build an Iron roofed house for the past two years but could afford it. As my income would only allow me to pay school fees and buy food.
What did you spend your most recent transfer(s) on?
I am a professional soup maker for the past five years. This skill I developed four years earlier while working as a casual hotel laborer before starting my current hotel. This was a result of trying out many jobs and businesses and failing. Examples are water vending which affected my health. Secondly is maize vending which was affected by the outbreak of the maize disease and the last fruit vending which was seasonal. This made me try out the hotel business and it's doing pretty well. This is because on open-air market days I make a profit of KES 4000 but on regular days I make a profit of KES 1000. This has helped in school payments and feeding my family.
Recently, when I received my transfers KES 28 000 on building a 27 Iron roofed two-roomed house. Of this KES 18,000 was used on 27 Ironsheets, KES 2,800 on timber frames, KES 3,000 on eucalyptus trees, and KES 4,500 on labor costs. This is because I had only one tiny grass-thatched house which was built three years ago
Furthermore, I spent KES 3,000 on six plastic chairs. This is because the ones I had were locally made benches and armchairs. This will help in hosting visitors easily without borrowing like before.
In addition, I spent KES 2000 on a bag of maize. This will sustain my family before I get the next transfer. Lastly, I spent KES 2000 topping up my yearly hotel rent because we normally pay KES 18,000 a year at the rate of KES 1,500 each month.
Enrolled
access_time over 2 years ago
What does receiving this money mean to you?
For the past ten years I and my husband have been living a very difficult life. It was a period where my 2 children were in highschool, maize crops started failing in this region and and unpredictable weather patterns started. We used to grow and sell maize to earn an income but we found ourselves between a rock and a hard place when it could not grow anymore. Sometimes it would grow but the rain would fail. I was so desperate and poverty started to bite us hard. For my children who needed school fees then ,I had to sell all the livestock we had. I am glad it helped them finish school. We have since then remained without any asset, meeting our basic needs is a problem. We are even afraid that old age is catching up with us and we have no proper amenities in this house. We would therefore like to invest this money to buy cows. This will ensure that we have continuous income to meet our basic needs through the sale of their products. When they come and reproduce also we shall have an asset base of which in any eventuality we can sell and have some money.
What is the happiest part of your day?
My house got connected to the national electricity grid in October and we no longer stay in total darkness at night, that's what has given me joy over the recent past.
What is the biggest hardship you've faced in your life?
Meeting our basic needs is a challenge, my husband cannot do any work because he has a weak arm. I am being depended on to provide everything. We have educated our children but they have not been able to secure a job which is very unfortunate. We hope things will get better later in life though.
