Last year a project by a different organisation was introduced to us back on the village. The organisation wanted to help us the villagers who were interested in poultry farming to start poultry business. It included paying a certain amount of money in instalments over a period of time and they only required one to have a hen house before they gave you an amount of twenty chicken which were made of two cocktails and eighteen hens who were about two months old. I wanted to be a part of the project so after receiving the funds I went ahead and made a chicken coop so that I could finally receive the hens. I used my entire transferring trying to construct this chicken house and ended up using all the KES 3,000 that I had received.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does so well in all its ways of operations, ranging from how it sensitizes its recipients, to the actual sending of transfers. I think that the act of giving cash transfers to GiveDrirectly recipients is an idea well thought of. It gives us, the recipients a great opportunity to be involved in decision-making on what to do with our money. By observing how other recipients have spent their transfers within my village, I have seen this model being more impactful in our lives. On contrary, I have not yet observed what GiveDirectly does not do well.

For years and years, I have been relying on peasant farming as my main source of livelihood. However, the year 2021 was a tough year for me since I experienced a prolonged drought that totally destroyed my crops. I was hard hit by this phenomenon that eventually left us struggling in order to obtain food. Consequently, the situation made my family be in a constant lack, a situation we had never experienced before. When GiveDirectly began to send me transfers, I prioritized buying food for the family because my wages from irregular casual jobs are too low to meet my household’s needs.

It was on the eleventh of November when I was out busy taking the livestock to a neighboring watering point. I heard my phone beep and checked to see that I had received the money. I was so happy even though part of the money was cut to pay off the debt I had borrowed. Thank you Give directly this chance.

The biggest difference in my life is that things are getting better and I can see a bright ahead. My livestock has been dying due to starvation and thirst. I was also not able to secure an income to support my family. This would give me hypertension and I was even falling into depression. Now I can provide financial stability for my family, and it's all thanks to Give directly.

My daughter suffers from a mental illness and at the same time, she had fallen sick. We were worried about how we would have been able to get her treatment and also buy the drugs she was prescribed. It had been a stressful couple of days. The first thing I did when I received was to pay back the small debt I had on my phone which was KES.459. The rest of the money, KES.700, I took out and took my daughter to the hospital to get medical treatment. This eased the heavy burden on my shoulders where I wondered if she would get better. Thanks to Give directly, things worked out.