My life is different than how it would have been had I not received the transfer because I have been able to pay school fees for my son on time. Due to this, he was able to sit for his examinations. Also, I now own some assets that I can depend on in case of an emergency.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly did well by ensuring that everyone received the transfer and I do not see anything that they did not do well.

When I received my second transfer, I spent a good amount to pay school fees for my sin in college. I settled on this so that he would be allowed to sit for his examinations. I spent the remaining amount to buy some food and other household necessities for my family.

The biggest difference in my daily life is the fact that I have finally been able to buy a dairy cow. This is something I have been looking forward to achieving considering that I have been buying milk for household consumption, something that has been very expensive for us. This was particularly difficult for me considering that I entirely depended on casual labour to raise income that could be used to meet the basic household needs and which sometimes was hard to find. There are times when we had to go without breakfast owing to the fact that I did not find any job the previous day and it was so demoralizing and embarrassing as well. During such times, I often felt like I had failed in my sole responsibility as a parent. We currently have enough milk for my family and a surplus for sale and this has greatly improved our living standards as a family. I also used part of the income to buy farm inputs and hybrid seeds and we are looking forward to having an even bigger harvest this season which will make us food sufficient and empower us to meet other family expenses. My children are a happy lot because I was able to pay their school fees in time and this has led to an improvement in their performance a lot compared to the previous and past terms. Nothing could make me more proud as a parent than being able to give the best to my children.

I felt very happy the moment I received money from GiveDirectly. I could not believe my eyes when I checked my phone and found out that I had received a sum of KES 55000. I had never received such an amount of money before in my entire life. I was particularly happy knowing very well that my plan of buying a dairy cow shall come to pass and allow us to divert the money that would otherwise have been used to buy milk into other meaningful family investments.

I spent part of my first transfer on buying food for the family because we had no food in a store at the time we received this transfer. We had just come from a dry spell season which saw us harvest very little from our farms. This had left us relying solely on casual labor to buy food and other basic household needs. I also used part of the remaining amount to buy a sofa set, a dairy cow and the remaining amount was used to buy a goat. I feel so proud that I have increased the number of assets that I own knowing very well that I will be using them to meet any financial emergencies should they arise.