Before GD came to our area, I used to rely on water vending business as my main source of income. It was very tedious and production was very low. My life was constant because I could not even raise enough to meet my needs. In most cases, I had to seek help from my parents. When I started receiving transfers from GD, I thought of the best way to invest and decided on cloth business. I am glad I made the right choice because on a daily basis, I come back to the house with money and I no longer struggle as I used to when I depended on water vending business. My life is now progressing because I don't rely on my parents anymore but I am the one offering help now.

Currently, I am focussing my transfers in my business. This is my main source of income and I have witnessed an increase in sales from the small difference in stock through GD transfers. This is why I have decided to invest in the business by adding more stock on a monthly basis. This will increase my income through profits and help make the business stable and sustainable.

I spent my transfer on boosting my cloth business by adding more stock of clothes to the business. I am determined to make the business stable since it is all I depend on and will continue to depend on long after the transfers are gone. I also used part of the transfer to buy food for the family. I have realised the secret of reducing my expenditure by buying food in bulk once a month. This is why I chose to buy food in bulk. The remaining amount of money, I have saved to help me during any financial emergency in future.

My main job before I got enrolled in this program was water supply which I did on foot because I could not afford to hire a cart as most people in this business do. The job kept me going even though it was barely able to take care of my basic needs and was very exhausting. After delivering several jerrycans of water to different destinations the whole day, I could not even manage to prepare my own meal at the end of the day and would mostly eat out or just go hungry. The difference I currently have in my life courtesy these transfers is having a better and a less strenuous job. I managed to start a clothing business that I run in a temporary business structure near my area of residence. I am glad that I no longer have to strain as much as I did before and what I make on a good day is almost triple what I would earn when I worked as a water supplier.

I am still trying to figure out how to make my current clothes business grow into something more sustainable than what it currently is. I also want to be able to bring in more stock at once other than buying a little stock more times which is costly on transportation. For this reason, I currently have no additional plans as my main goal is to stabilize and expand my current business.

In order to grow my business, I try to invest part of my transfers whenever I received them in my clothes business by adding more stock, so this month, I added more stock worth KES2000 of the money that I received. I spent some on foodstuff and other household requirements then saved the rest in my M-pesa account for any financial emergencies that may arise within the month.

Currently, my life is different from how it was in that, I have my own business. I do not depend on casual jobs like selling water which was unreliable. I have learned to manage it in terms of the variety that the customer needs and how to lure them to buy the clothes which I sell. I can never compare it with the past casual jobs that I have ever done. I thank GiveDirectly very much because I can take care of my needs easily using the profits from the business unlike before.

My new goal is to have a business structure. I hawk clothes in the streets of Nairobi. It has various disadvantages like the County Council arresting the hawkers. I do not want to break the law. I want to reach a point where I can have a place that most of my clients can access easily.

I spent part of my transfer on boosting my business. I sell clothes. I decided to boost my business because my stock had reduced. I had started the business with the previous transfers. Before then, I used to do odd jobs like fetching water for people to get money but it was tiresome. The money was also not enough to cater to my needs. Now that I have a business that I started with the transfer, I take most of my energy to make sure that it is up and running.

My goals now that I have started receiving the money is to join a college to further my studies. With the current changing world, being jobless is the worst thing someone can think of. I believe that even if I will not be able to secure myself a job immediately I am done with my studies, I will be having some knowledge and skills on how to go about some things which will help me earn some income.

I had a business of buying and selling second-hand clothes but it collapsed after some time because I had used all my profits to cater for my needs without bothering to boost it. It has always been my dream to revive this but I have not been able to due to of lack of money. Since I started receiving money from GiveDirectly, I have been able to save some money on a monthly basis which I am aiming to use it to achieve this. At the moment, being able to save some money to use in reviving my business is so far the biggest difference I have experienced in my daily life since I started receiving payments from GiveDirectly.

I spent part of my most recent transfer to buy some food in stock so that it can last me a whole month. It has always been my dream to be self-employed one day but I had not been able to accomplish this because the little money I get from my daily hustles was not even enough to pay for my bills. I saved the remaining amount so that I can use them after they have accumulated to start a business.

I became so happy the moment I started receiving my money from GiveDirectly. This is because I knew that my problems would be solved using this money. Having no stable source of income in our current economy is a big problem because one can barely achieve anything.