I have a new goal of accumulating enough money from now to December that will allow me pay school fees for my son who is already in secondary school. When I received money from GiveDirectly, I was able to pay ahead by two terms and this gave me an opportunity to be prepared enough even for the second born who is joining secondary school as from next year too. I plan to do this by not only depending on my subsistence farming but also engaging in casual jobs that will earn me extra income. We have a huge responsibility of paying school fees ahead of us and we are so much focused on saving enough to use on school fees. Our desire has always been to make sure that our children have the best in terms of education so that their future can be more secure.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does very well in making sure that everyone is included in the program. It is very satisfying to see how very needy people benefitted from the transfers and more satisfying seeing them have better living standards than they had before receiving the money. This to me, was the most perfect gift to us from GiveDirectly. On the other hand, I did not find anything that I thought could have been done better by GiveDirectly than how it was done.

I am a mother of three children with one of them already in his secondary level of education. Our second born is joining secondary level too next year while the last born is still at lower level of primary school. When we received the second transfer, we used $200 to pay school fees for our first born son. With this amount, we were able to pay ahead by two terms making the life of our child at school very comfortable. We also did this so as to get enough time to look for money and to save as much money as possible for our children considering that our second born is soon starting his secondary studies too. It was such a relief for us to have benefitted from the program. I then used another $210 to purchase a water tank. For a long time, I had desired to buy a high capacity water tank but due to the nature of work that I do and the little income that I get from it, I was not able to buy one. I feel so much happy that I now have one and that I will no longer have to travel for long distances in search of water even during times when there is heavy rainfall. My husband works as a mechanic while I do subsistence farming and sometimes engage in casual jobs just to make ends meet for us. We are eternally grateful to GiveDirectly for the support that we received from them and fir the change that it brought in our lives. The little amount that remained was used to buy clothes, food and other basic household needs for our family

It was 7:30 am and I was on my way going to a self-help group meeting that was being held in the household of one of our group members. I had my phone with me and I decided to have a look at it as I went on my way. I saw that I had a new message and on opening it, I was surprised and I could not believe my eyes when I read that I had received KES 55000 from GiveDirectly. I was so happy and I thanked God for it. I immediately called my husband who had already gone out to work and I told him what had transpired. He was so happy too and he told me that he was going to come back home later so that we could plan. I went to the meeting and from the look of happiness that was written all over the faces of most of my group members, I could tell that they had too received the piece of good news.

The transfer has brought a big difference in our lives as a family. This is because with having bought the cow, we no longer incur the cost of buying milk like before. We have hence managed to save some money. Our child was also able to join a secondary school and for this, we are happy and grateful.

We spent KES 37000 of our recent transfer on buying another cow. We bought the cow because the ones that we had, had dried and hence we were lacking a source of milk for our consumption. We were thus buying some, where we used to buy a liter every day at KES 50. This was somehow costly to us since we have other needs to meet, that is, to pay school fees for our three children and to buy food. I am a small-scale subsistence farmer while my husband has a welding shop. He is hence solely the breadwinner of the family. Other than the above, we also spent KES 10000 on buying the necessary school items for our son who was joining secondary school, and with the remaining amount, we added It to the savings that my husband had, and we used it to pay school fees for the boy. We are thus grateful to GiveDirectly for their big support. May God bless you.