No, I do not have any new goals since the major one that I had was to clear school fees for my kids and I am glad I managed to accomplish it. It has been so tough on my end because my spouse is old and sick. Therefore I have been the breadwinner of the family all along. With the meager incomes, my children were always at home as a result of the accumulated fees.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does well in so many ways in my village. First and foremost I received the money directly, and I was able to pay the school fees for my children. Also, the unconditionality part stood out. Therefore I do not see any part that GiveDirectly needs to change.

I spent KES 25000 of my second transfer on clearing fees arrears for my son who is in his second year pursuing a teaching course. To add to that I went ahead and paid KES 15000 for my other son who has just enrolled two months ago, pursuing an electrical engineering course. It has always been my dream to see them get a better education and I am so grateful because financial help came at the right time. I was so stressed since I had no idea when and where I would acquire the needed money to cater to their schooling. Finally, with the remaining amount, I bought foodstuffs for my eight children and some other household items like utensils.

An always borrowing parent is a disgrace to the community, no friends, no one to give them a company neither willing to be associated with. That is the exact situation I was in. my body was tired of making charcoal and my husband is old to work anymore. At around 9am in one of the morning, I was on my way to the neighborhood villages to seek for assistance from well-wishers so that I could get something to send to school because my child was in the verge of dropping out of college due to fees. I didn’t bother the insults I was getting form almost all the corners in the village due to my persistence in borrowing. On that one particular morning before entering the first homestead I was approaching, I received a message in my phone. Tears of joy dropped unconditionally down my cheeks and I was dumbfounded after seeing KES 55000.00 in my phone that had been sent by GiveDirectly. I felt so happy and I slowly went back home amazed.

We have been the community’s laughingstock for a while, nobody wanted to be associated with us and we lacked friends. Sometimes I used to sit alone and found myself talking with no one not because I was mad but because of the problems I didn’t know how I was going to tackle them. As of now things have magnificently changed. We eat well and we feel the life which we were lacking. Currently we have friends who come visit us and also people are willing to accompany us not as before when we were being neglected. We no longer have debts, we are living freely and happily.

The first thing I settled was the KES 37000.00 school fees for my college child. This was a priority since my son was in the verge of dropping out of college and I had no means of helping out the situation. My main work was making and selling charcoals whose income couldn’t even manage to cater for the family’s daily meals. My husband was very willing to support me as he used to do but he couldn’t because he has become dependent too due to old age. I also paid a debt of KES 2000.00 to a shopkeeper who used to give us some maize flour. I took KES 3000.00 and repaired a bicycle to help us in fetching some water since the water points are far away. Looking at the drought situation in our area and the family’s financial status, I opted to keep the remaining amount of money to keep us going as far as food is concerned.