I do subsistence farming for a living. In the coming year and beyond, I am planning to hire a piece of land as the one I have is smaller in size. I will be hiring labour so as to save on the time wastage. I have been doing it with my two sons who are still schooling and it could take us a whole month to complete a piece of land. In addition to this, I will be opening up a new business of groceries to be operated by my wife. The business will specifically be taking care of the family's basic needs like food and clothing.

In my opinion, what GiveDirectly does well in this program is that we receive the transfers in lumpsum amounts. This helps in planning as one is in a position to do something huge as compared to when the transfers are given in small instalments. The unlearned recipients are taught how to use mpesa. This has reduced the number of theft cases in the community as most of us managed to change our pins to a more secure code. To avoid household conflict, what needs to be done differently is enrolling all the individuals in the household. During enrollment, those individuals who did not have responsibilities by then were left out of the program yet these are the same people who steal from their old and vulnerable parents. Give Directly staff are very transparent during the enrollment process, they are so keen during the verification process and this ensures that none is left out during registration to the program. Another thing that needs to be done differently is enrolling all the communities in a specific village for uniformity purposes and this will prevent too many complaints coming from the communities that are left out during the registration to the programs.

I am a parent of two boys who are in form three, I used part of the transfers of kshs 25,000 to pay their school fees. Before the GiveDirectly transfers, I never had any stable source of income and providing for my family had been the most difficult task I have ever faced. I used the remaining part of the transfers of kshs 25,000 to build a two-bedroom house. I owned a small grass-thatched house which was leaking during the rainy season. Besides, getting the grass for replacement was tiresome as transportation was too costly. I thank Give Directly for the transfers as my peace of mind is finally restored.

I felt so happy the moment I received money from GiveDirectly. I received the money at around 6:00pm and I was already at home. I informed my son who was my helper and we withdrew the money the same day since we were living in fear of having the money stolen by other fraud sters as we had been warned by our officers during enrollment.

The biggest difference in my life is that I am a more happy man having bought some of my livestock and I now sleep well. Having bought a mattress means that I can now sleep very well after a hard day's work and I often wake up feeling very rejuvenated. I am just about to start building a new house for my brother since I have already bought some building materials.

I used KES 13000 to buy a cow and used KES 8000 to buy pieces of iron sheets and used another KES 3000 to buy a mattress and the remaining amount was used to buy food. These are the things that I had prioritized doing. The dairy cow was so that I would be able to raise money to meet emergency needs in future and as for the pieces of iron sheets, this was to make sure that I get to accumulate building materials to put up a house for my brother who has been staying with me for the longest time.