I have a new goal of improving my grocery business. Before receiving GiveDirectly transfers, I used to rely on broking of these commodities to earn a living or to make ends meet for my family. This business often fetched very little amount of money hardly enough to buy food. My goal is now to make sure that I pumb in enough money to the business that I started with my second transfer. Right now it is difficult for me to do this since I use almost all the extra cash that I make to pay school fees for my children.

GiveDirectly did well by enrolling everyone and giving each person the freedom to choose how to spend the money. As for us, the money came when we had many problems; our house had been earlier demolished and we had not been in a position to build another one, we had serious school fees problems and serous hunger problems as well. All these would not have been sorted out had it been that we were supposed to use the money in a specific way. We were able to use the money to our own benefit and we are happy about this.

I used KES 10000 to pay school fees for my children and used another 20000 to buy a heifer. The remaining amount was used to buy food and clothes for the family. The money came when we had serious hunger crisis where getting a meal for a day was a toll order. It came as a rescue to us to avert the crisis of that particular moment. We also had a serious problem of lack of school fees for our three children who are in secondary school. We had not been able to buy any livestock since we highly depended on casual work to make income which would only see us buy food and pay school fees albeit with some struggle then. We are so happy to have been part of the beneficiaries of GiveDirectly program.

It was on a Friday and I was at the market selling when the GiveDirectly officer called and I had a deep conversation with her. At around 4 pm, I was surprised to receive a Mpesa message indicating that the promised transfer had been deposited into my account. My heart was filled with joy after confirming through checking the Mpesa balance and I immediately sent an SMS to my spouse to inform him of the good news.

My two children had stayed at home for some time since I had not been able to pay their school fees on time. With the transfer, I was able to clear their fee arrears and they're doing well in school. This has made me so happy and I am always at peace knowing that they will never be sent back home any time soon. In addition, being able to finish the construction of our house and start living in it has given me so much joy. I had left it incomplete for over a year and had decided to concentrate on my children's education after the school that was sponsoring one of my children stopped their sponsorship.

I am a vegetable vendor and I usually move from one market to another selling since this is where I can make most of the sales compared to selling them in the village. I usually spend the money I get from this business to pay school fees for our six children and they're at home mostly since it is always not enough to make timely payments. When I received my recent transfer, I spent KES 15000 to pay school fees for my two children in secondary school who had been sent back home. In addition, I spent KES 10000 to buy a heifer as a way of investing this money so that it will aid me in paying school fees for my children through the sale of surplus when it calves. Also, I spent around KES 7000 to finish the construction of our house by buying three iron sheets and paying for the labor. I had already started building it before GiveDirectly came for enrollment but left it incomplete. I used the remaining KES 20000 on food and clothes.