I am planning to save towards opening my own local restaurant by next year. This will mean that, I will become financially independent and I will be able to pay school fees for my children and provide basic need to them without much strain as it has been. Since I was able to buy some goats with my first transfer, my wife will focus on taking care of them so that they multiply and we will be able to sell them in future and cater for other needs.

What GiveDirectly does well is empowering us in various ways. I was able to buy some livestock which will help me in future and same applies to so many people in the community where GiveDirectly works. Thank you for the financial aid and may you reach as many people as you can.

I have been living in a single muddy grass thatched house with my wife and our three children. Being a chef in a local restaurant and earning $3, I have never been able to do much to my family except providing basic income. When I was enrolled in the program, I saw this a s a good opportunity to build my family a good house so that they can have somewhere proud to call home. I spend my second transfer to build a semi-permanent two bedroom house and I am so grateful to GiveDirectly for the support since I have my privacy as a parent and my children have enough shared bedroom. I would not have done this on my own and I am so grateful.

It was 8:15 am and I was on my way to the nearest shopping center to buy milk when suddenly I heard my phone ringing hence notifying me of a new message. I stopped to check it and wow! I could not believe my eyes when I read that I had received KES 55000 that GiveDirectly had earlier promised us. I was so happy on seeing this and I hurriedly went to the shops so that I could get back home and tell my wife the good news. When I came back home, I found everyone in the neighborhood happy and celebrating since they had also received the transfers. My wife was so happy too when I told her that we had received the transfer. We celebrated together giving thanks to God for the blessing.

The transfer has brought a big difference in our lives as a family. We managed to build another house something we never thought we will be able to achieve soon since we didn't have the money. The new house will become the main house and the other one that we use to live in will become the kitchen. We are thus grateful to GiveDirectly for supporting us.

We spent more than KES 30000 of our recent transfer on building another house. We spent a total of KES 20000 on buying the iron sheets and we paid KES 7000 for labor. We also spent some on buying the trees and cutting them down for construction. We decided to build another house because we only had one house. It has always been our wish to build another house but we didn't have the money needed to do so. I do not have a stable source of income and hence I usually depend on casual jobs to earn a living. The money that I get paid is not much, it is usually only enough to buy food and buy milk. Sometimes the casual jobs are not available and hence I am forced to take food on credit from the shop with a promise to pay later. We also spent KES 7000 on buying a goat. We bought the goat so that it could provide us with milk for our consumption when it reproduces. We do not have a source of milk and hence we usually incur the cost of buying some, where we usually buy half a liter every day at KES 30 which is only enough to prepare tea. My children are hence lacking milk for consumption which is good for their health. Other than that, we spent KES 3500 on tilling our piece of land and we planted maize. With the remaining transfer amount, we spent on buying clothes and food for our consumption.