Our new goal is to complete the construction of the house that we are living in and to continue struggling to get money for paying school fees for our children. We had tried our best to build another house before we got the transfers from GiveDirectly. We were however not able to complete it since we lacked enough money. We did not manage to place all the doors and the windows. We only placed those for the bedroom. We have hence been feeling the biting cold of the night. We have not been in a position to continue with the construction because of the heavy burden of paying school fees for the children.

GiveDirectly did well by giving us money so that we can plan on our own how to spend it. This is because people have different needs. If they could have decided to buy us something with the money, they would not have made a big impact on the lives of most of the people since the thing bought might not be a priority to the person. I do not see anything wrong with how they conduct their work, everything went well and smoothly.

We spent most of the recent transfer on payment of school fees for the children. We spent a total of KES 39000 on doing so. We paid for three, one who is at the university, another in a polytechnic college, and another in secondary school. We have a lot of children that we are responsible for educating because we are also supporting my mother-in-law's children who are almost the same age as my children. We have thus been struggling a lot to get money for doing so. We usually depend on farming and the cows that we have to get money. We usually plant maize and sell it after harvesting. We also at times sell some of the calves that we have. We are thus grateful and happy because GiveDirectly made our burden easy through the transfers that they sent us. If it was not for them we could have sold part of our land to get the school fees that were needed urgently. With the remaining amount of money, that is, KES 11000, we used it in buying a steel door for our house. We have hence managed to prevent a little bit of cold having fixed the door. Thank you so much GiveDirectly for the help.

I was in my garden weeding my vegetables when I heard my message notification ringtone ring. I decided to read it to know who would have sent me an SMS at that time and to know its contents. Upon checking, I saw a Mpesa message showing that I had received money from GiveDirectly. I was overwhelmed with joy and happiness and I knew that I will be able to pay school fees for my children. I then informed my spouse and children of the wonderful news that came our way and words cannot express how happy they were. I am grateful to have received the support from GiveDirectly.

I was full of stress before receiving the transfer since I have three children in college and one who is in a secondary school. We were supposed to clear their fee arrears for all of them and time was not on our side as the dateline was fast approaching. Selling a dairy cow was out of the question since we have one and my spouse has a loan that he has been servicing. I am grateful to god and GiveDirectly for they saved us from topping up a loan in the bank since the transfer enabled us to clear fee arrears for my children in college. At the moment, I am at peace and happy since my children are doing well in their various institutions of learning.

Upon receiving my transfer, I spent KES 45000 to pay school fees for my two children in the university after tithing KES 5000. I am a subsistence farmer while my husband is a teacher. He has always been taking loans to use in paying school fees for our children and we currently have so many loans that we are servicing. Before receiving the transfer, we had settled on topping up a loan from the bank so that our children would not miss sitting for their examinations and I am glad that GiveDirectly saved us from this as we received the transfer when my spouse was planning to go and start applying for it. Using the remaining KES 5000, I bought a steel door since I was living in an incomplete house without a kitchen door and it was always so cold at night.