The biggest difference in my life because of the transfers is that I have a permanent house. I have been living in a mud-walled house for the past two years. I have been finding it hard to smear on a monthly basis just to keep the house tidy and presentable. We had agreed with my husband to upgrade our house to a permanent one by buying building materials to build a new one. We had agreed to have a savings account where we will keep the money but before we could get a good source of income to start our savings, we received our transfers which we have used to fulfil our goal.

The best thing about GD is that they gave money instead of an item. This was very helpful because we have different needs and giving an item would have helped a section of the villagers. There is nothing GD should improve as far as I am concerned.

I spent my transfer on buying building materials such as iron sheets, timber which I added to the ones I had bought with part of my first transfer. I have been living in a small grass-thatched house and I thought it wise to use the transfers to upgrade to an iron-roofed house. I also used part of the transfer on paying school fees for my children who are in primary school. My desire is to always pay their fees in advance so that they may not be sent home for fees arrears throughout their life. The rest of the transfer I use on buying four goats as an investment for my family. My desire is to have an investment which I can turn to when I have a financial crisis without having to seek help or borrow. I also bought food to boost the little stock we had left in the house.

I feel GiveDirectly has finally fulfilled what I have been trying to achieve for years. I had always tried and worked extra hard to improve my family's living standards but my efforts proved futile. I was almost giving up on my dreams when Give Directly finally came to my life. One of my goals was to build a new decent house. The little earnings from burning and selling charcoal weren't enough to build the house. Having children to pay fees and other basic needs depleted my earnings with nothing left to save. I did not have another option but to just live in my grass-thatched house. To me, the biggest difference in my daily life has been building a permanent house for my family. Through the transfers, I purchased enough building materials that included pieces of iron sheets, building poles and paid for the labour. I am grateful to GiveDirectly for enabling me to finally achieve this dream.

I heard a loud vibration on my phone early that morning. I was eager to know who might have thought of texting me that early. At some point, I thought it was an emergency so I jumped from my bed and grabbed my phone. I was greatly overjoyed upon reading the contents of the message. It was from GiveDirectly, they had finally honoured their promise by sending the first transfers. I was surprised to receive the exact figure they had a talk about when we held our first community meeting. I started planning how I would invest it since this was the only hope to completely change my life.

I was initially living in a grass thatched house. I always believed that I would one day build a decent iron-roofed house but looking at my source of income, this was almost impossible to achieve due to the meagre earnings. However, when GiveDirectly came, my dream came true. Receiving my first transfer enabled me to buy enough building materials which include 20 pieces of iron sheets, building poles and paid the mason for his job. Apart from that, I used the remaining amount of money to buy daily foodstuffs for family and some other basic needs such as clothes and a few household expenses.