This year, I was looking forward to open a local petroleum selling shop whereby, I can sell charcoal to local motorists. Although I was not able to achieve this fully with my first transfer, I am looking for funds and hopefully, I will open the business in two month's time. Achieving this means that I will be able to pay school fees for my children.

What GiveDirectly does well is helping the most poorest in the society uplift their standards of living by giving them unconditional cash transfers. Most people in the village were able to achieve what they never thought would be achievable in life and we are very grateful for that.

Both my husband and I depend on burning and selling charcoal to earn living. We have known this to be our only source of livelihood since we got married because our region is very dry and we can not rely on food from the farm. It takes us two weeks to get four bags of charcoal and one sells for $3. With income of around $14 per month, it has not been easy for us raising our seven children and most of the days, we survive on one meal per day. When our son was graduating from primary school, we had no hope of taking him to high school because we had no savings and couldn't afford to raise his school fees. The transfers came in handy for us because it gave him hope of proceeding to high school. We spend $500 of the second transfer for his school shopping and school fees and we are happy that we were able to clear three quarter of his first year's school fees. We spend the balance of $50 to buy two goats which we hope that they're going to multiply and help us pay school fees some day. We are so grateful to GiveDirectly for giving our family hope.

I felt so happy the moment I received money from GiveDirectly. It was around 4:00 pm when I saw the message and confirmed that I had indeed received the sum. At first I could not believe my eyes and it is my husband who saw the message and convinced me that we had indeed received some money. What made me feel very happy was the fact that we were finally going to be able to buy food for our family and for once , we were not going to worry of how we would get our next meal. I felt grateful up until now fir this.

The biggest difference in my daily life is the glowing happiness in our family. We feel so much happy about what we have been able to do since we received money from GiveDirectly. Getting money to take our first born child to school is like a miracle to me. I could not imagine where we would get such money let alone sustaining him in school. GiveDirectly came in handy and helped us a lot by making it easy for us. The goats that we bought have also made it easy for us to plan ahead in terms of paying his school fees and meeting the need of our other children.

We received the money when we had already built a house for us as a family. We were yet to pay the men who helped us out up the house and we therefore used $50 to clear the labour costs. We used another $20 to buy goats for keeping at home. The remaining $300 was saved in my Mshwari account to be used early next year when our first born shall join secondary school. The decision to buy goats was so that we get enough money to sustain our child in school and to meet other emerging needs when they come. Goats can easily multiply and as such it will be of great assistance to us in paying school fees for our first born child and even meeting the needs of our other six children. They are not also affected as such by drought and hence the most viable project as at now. Drought situation has really dealt us a blow and getting food on the table for our family has been very tough. This is unlike before when we would practice farming and have plenty of food within our household all year round. Meeting all the needs of our family alongside buying food has made life for us quite difficult especially now that we entirely rely on my husband who works as a charcoal seller.