We check in with people at each stage of the cash transfer process to see how things are going. Take a look at some of their stories as they appear here in real-time.
Learn more about how recipients opt in to share their stories.
Describe the moment when you received your money. How did you feel?
I was in the kitchen cooking in the evening when I received a short message notification on my phone, when checked on its content I realized that I had received KES 55000 from GiveDirectly. From that I believed that the promise we were given during registration was true. I shared this with my spouse and we sat down to plan on how to spend the money.
Describe the biggest difference in your daily life since you started receiving payments from GiveDirectly.
Two things have changed in my daily life when I received transfer from GiveDirectly. First, I no longer have stress on how to get money for school fees as our child had been sent home more often to collect school fees. Having paid fees for the next one year, we shall have enough time to look for money for paying school fees for next year. Secondly, we have a lactating dairy cow and now we no longer buy milk for use at home as it used to be before getting these transfer. I am so grateful to GiveDirectly for the support that the gave to us to improve our livelihoods.
What did you spend your most recent transfer(s) on?
We do depend on farming as our main source of income and we have a child who recently joined high school. Raising school fees was a challenge and we would struggle day in day out. When we got these transfers, we spent KES 20000 on paying for his school fees for three terms and that eased our biggest burden.
The second plan which we had was to acquire a cow and we did that, we bought a lactating dairy cow at a cost of KES 30000. We were rearing one which we were given by a neighbor and we saw that it would be brilliant to have our own as well at such a time that we needed one. The rest of the money we spent on buying foodstuffs for my family.
Enrolled
access_time over 2 years ago
What does receiving this money mean to you?
We are a family of six, and four of them are school-going children. We depend solely on consistent farming as the main source of income. Due to insufficient rains and long periods of drought, sometimes the crops do not do well. We mainly depend on maize, beans, and sweet potatoes. We plan to use KES 40,000 to purchase one dairy cow to help us produce milk for domestic consumption. We spend a lot of money( up to KES 3000 ) a month to purchase milk. This is quite stressful considering there are other needs like food and clothing. For the rest of the amount, we plan to pay school fees for our child joining the secondary school this week.
What is the happiest part of your day?
We usually have a village merry-go-round support group. I was given KES 20,000 in February which helped me pay off school fees for my children at school. I was so happy since I could not save this much on my own.
What is the biggest hardship you've faced in your life?
The main challenge is food insecurity. This is brought about by low rainfall and long dry periods. When we do not have maize which is our staple food, we are forced to source from the market which is very expensive.
