In the next one year, I plan to raise enough money to pay school fees for my four children. Owing to the fact that I rely almost entirely on farming and dairy keeping to raise money to meet such expenses, I might be forced to sell one asset that we own-dairy cow to help raise the much needed school fees. The drought which stayed for quite sometime delayed our farming and it is for this reason that we might struggle to pay the fee. I am however so grateful for the support that I received from GiveDirectly.

In my opinion GiveDirectly does very well by giving us support in form of cash. This cash gives everyone an opportunity to choose wisely on how to spend the money and to prioritize on what to spend on. This is so much helpful to everyone at individual level On the other hand, I do not find anything that I think GiveDirectly could do better. Everything they do is perfect and so much in order.

I used 25000 to pay school fees for my children who are in secondary school and used the remaining amount to buy food and clothes for my children. The money came at a time that one of my children was joining secondary school and the only asset that was at my disposal was a dairy cow. Had we not received this cash then we would have sold this only asset to take our child to school. I am a mother of six who relies solely on maize farming to raise income that helps me pay school fees and meet other needs of my family. I am so happy that I was able to comfortably take one of my children to secondary school and that I did not sell any asset as I had anticipated. It has also given me an opportunity to plan ahead on how I am going to pay school fees in the coming days.

It was some few minutes past 11 pm and I had just woken up to give food to my husband who had just arrived when I heard my message ringtone ring. I went ahead to read it after serving him and I became so happy on seeing the Mpesa message and immediately informed him about the good news. He was overjoyed as he claimed that the burden of paying school fees had finally been lifted off for a while.

We were planning as a family to sell one of our cows to pay school fees for our children since we did not want an instance where they would be sent back home. While we were still looking for a buyer, we received our first transfer and I am glad that it came at the right time as we were able to use part of it to clear the fee balance that we had. My joy is in the fact that we were able to pay their school fees without selling any of our assets and we are aspiring to achieve more using our next transfer.

We depend on livestock and crop farming as a family in educating our six children and to cater to our basic needs. We mainly plant maize and beans and later sell them and use the money in paying school fees and we at times take these items to school instead of selling them. When I received my transfer, I spent KES 30000 to pay school fees for two children at the secondary school level and used KES 14000 on food and clothes. This is because the festive season was fast approaching and in our community, people celebrate it by making delicious meals and wearing new clothes and shoes. We used the remaining KES 10,000 to take my husband's car for service since the schools were almost closing for holidays and we usually use it to drop our children at school and also pick them up when they're coming for holidays.