Before receiving the transfers, we used to live in a small house that used to be a shop for my husbands family. This would still be the same had I not received the transfer. I am now glad that I was able to build a more spacious house for my family using part of the transfers.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does well by giving out financial aid and bringing families together and I do not see anything that they do not do well.

My spouse runs a clothes business and due to the hard economic times which resulted from the outbreak of Covid-19, this business had gone down. Also, we had started using the returns from this business on food instead of acquiring more stock. When I received my transfers, we decided as a family to spend KES 20000 to boost it. In addition, I spent KES 12000 to buy three sets of seats and their cushions. Using the remaining amount, I bought some food and other household necessities.

I was still asleep when the SMS got into my phone. I woke up some ten minutes later and I decided to check my phone. I could not believe my eyes when I saw the SMS indicating that we had received the 55000/= transfer from GiveDirectly. I was so happy and I immediately informed my husband who was still asleep. He was extremely happy too and we celebrated and gave thanks to God and GiveDirectly for the help.

The money from GiveDirectly is going to create a very big difference in our life as a family. We will be able to finish constructing the house that had become hard for us to complete. We will therefore be able to live comfortably when the house gets finished and we will no longer be having worries about where we are to get money to complete it. The two goats that we bought are going to multiply in number with time and hence it can help us with other things. We can sell some of them and use the money in expanding the business or to attend to an emergency that might occur. The calf that we plan to buy with the remaining money will grow and when it reproduces, we will be able to get milk that my family can consume. We will hence be able to save up money that we have been using on buying milk. Also, with the two bags of maize that we bought with the transfer, we will be able to have something to eat for quite some time as we wait for the ones on the farm to ripen. We will thus not worry about what we are going to eat.

The transfer from GiveDirectly has been of great help to us. We were able to complete the construction of a house that we had started building. We were also able to buy two bags of maize that will serve as food for the family, bought two goats that we wanted to rear, and I invested some of the money in my business of selling clothes. We still have a little bit of the money remaining that we plan to use on buying a calf. We decided to settle on doing the above because these are the things that we have always wanted to do and we needed them the most. We have however not been able to because they require a large sum of money that we did not have. The money that we have been getting from the business has mostly been going to the purchase of food for the family.