I do subsistence farming for a living. In the coming year and beyond, I am planning to hire a piece of land as the one I have is smaller in size. I will be hiring labour so as to save on the time wastage. I have been doing it with my two sons who are still schooling and it could take us a whole month to complete a piece of land. In addition to this, I will be opening up a new business of groceries to be operated by my wife. The business will specifically be taking care of the family's basic needs like food and clothing.

In my opinion, what GiveDirectly does well in this program is that we receive the transfers in lumpsum amounts. This helps in planning as one is in a position to do something huge as compared to when the transfers are given in small instalments. Another thing that GiveDirectly does well is that the unlearned recipients are taught how to use mpesa. This has reduced the number of theft cases in the community as most of us managed to change our pins to a more secure code. To avoid household conflict, what needs to be done differently is enrolling all the individuals in the household. During enrollment, those individuals who did not have responsibilities by then were left out of the program yet these are the same people who steal from their old and vulnerable parents. Another thing that needs to be done differently is enrolling all the communities in a specific village for uniformity purposes and this will prevent too many complaints coming from the communities that are left out during the registration to the programs.

I am a parent of two boys who are in form three, I used part of the transfers of kshs 25,000 to pay their school fees. Before the GiveDirectly transfers, I never had any stable source of income and providing for my family had been the most difficult task I have ever faced. I used the remaining part of the transfers of kshs 25,000 to build a two-bedroom house. I owned a small grass-thatched house which was leaking during the rainy season. Besides, getting the grass for replacement was tiresome as transportation was too costly. I thank Give Directly for the transfers as my peace of mind is finally restored.

My neighbors received their transfers a day before I did. That day, after the day's work at the farm, at around 3 pm I was relaxing outside my house. That's when I heard an SMS alert on my phone, on checking I had received KES 55,000. I was very happy because I have never received lump sum.

The biggest difference in my daily life is relief from financial burdens. This is because I have cleared of school fees, and now we have adequate food for my family. I am also grateful because with the new house I will be free from the rains experienced in the previous grass-thatched house with a leaking roof.

I am a mason for the past 20 years and in a week I get up to KES 3,000 a week. From this, I normally pay for school fees, and also from cabbage farming we pay school fees. My wife also works as a food vendor and caters to food. Before GiveDirectly, my major issue of concern was building an Iron roofed house. This is because I had two grass-thatched houses with leaking roofs due to scarcity of roofing grass. Therefore, when I received my transfer, I spent KES 30,000 on the building of an Iron roofed house. Of this KES 19,500 was used on purchasing 26 Iron sheets, KES 3000 on construction trees, and KES 6000 on labor costs. Secondly, I used KES 15, 000 on payment of school fees for my two kids in high school and KES 2000 on accommodation fees for my son in college. This is because my masonry income and cabbage farming were unreliable at times due to the availability of work and the effects of drought respectively. I also bought KES 3000 on a bag of maize and KES 2500 on clothing. This will help sustain my family for a longer period unlike before when we relied on my wife's food vending business to eat and clothe.