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.
Describe the biggest difference in your daily life.
Family stability is the most important towards the success of any family but this wasn't my case before because my parents could pressure my spouse to pay my dowry or else they would take me back. This didn't give us peace in the family and as a woman, I felt ashamed about going back to my parents home, yet I had been married. I'm happy we are currently stable in the family because my spouse was able to pay the dowry. This is the biggest difference in my daily life.
Describe the moment when you received your money. How did you feel?
I had just woken up when I got a message alert from my phone. I headed straight to the phone to check the message and to my surprise, I had received money from GiveDirectly. It was such an amazing moment, I felt so happy, jumped up and down and whoever was around could think that I had gone mad.
What did you spend your first transfer on?
We have been married for two years but since then my spouse had not paid dowry and my parents kept pressuring him to pay the dowry. Since he didn't have a stable source of income, he couldn't afford it but the pressure from my parents really weighed him down and his self-esteem went down. The moment when I received the money I gave him a portion of the money which he paid for my dowry. We are now happy and stable in our family because there are no more threats from parents of them taking me back. In addition to that, I bought 7 goats for rearing as a way of investment. In the future, after they have given birth I can sell some of them in order to raise money for meeting other family needs. At the time we received the money we were financially down, and we didn't have food in the house, so I also bought food for family consumption.
Enrolled
access_time over 5 years ago
What does receiving this money mean to you?
My husband is employed as a vegetable vendor in Mombasa. He earns a salary of 4000 shillings a month, an amount that is not able to meet all our basic needs. With this transfer, my spouse will start his own grocery business because he is more experienced in it. This will earn us more income that we will use to cater for food, clothing and medical needs. We will also save and build a more spacious house since the current one is very small. We will also use part of this transfer to educate our two siblings who are total orphans.
What is the happiest part of your day?
As a subsistence farmer, I spend my morning morning hours doing farming. I prefer the morning when it is still cool and the sun is not so hot. The motivation behind this, is the fact that I will get enough produce to curb food insecurity. This is because I do not have enough money to purchase from the shop, therefore I have to put extra effort to ensure that my crops do well. Therefore, I consider morning as the happiest part of my day.
What is the biggest hardship you've faced in your life?
Financial constraint as a result of poor income is my biggest hardship. This affects our ability to meet family needs especially food, medical and housing expenses for my husband. In December 2017, I suffered from dengue fever but I could only raise 300 shillings at the hospital and my bill was 600 shillings. Besides this, sometimes we are forced to go without food for two consecutive days. My husband is also unable to raise his house rent of 1700 shillings in time, a situation that rendered him homeless for 5 months after the landlord locked his room. In this regard, we struggle so much to sustain the family.
