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 very happy and relived when i got the transfer. I knew that the looming hunger in my household will no longer happen
Describe the biggest difference in your daily life since you started receiving payments from GiveDirectly.
Last season i did not harvest enough due to lack of fertilizer, so i have always been stressed on how i will feed my family when we exhaust available food. The biggest difference was when i got the transfer because i was now able to feed my family and the stress is now over. Thank you.
What did you spend your most recent transfer(s) on?
I bought beddings such as mattress, blankets for my family since we did not have decent beddings. Due to lack of fertilizer, i harvested only 3 bags of maize in the last farming season which was not enough for my 3 member household so i also bought 5 bags of maize with the transfer. I have also saved some money to buy fertilizer when the rainy season starts. I have further started a potato chips business with part of the transfer.
Enrolled
access_time almost 3 years ago
What does receiving this money mean to you?
Receiving the money will meant alot in my family. Firstly, the money will help me starting up a business that I have been wanting to do but I couldn't die to lack of capital. I have a passion to open a grocery shop that later will turned into a wholesale shop.
Secondly, I want to build a small but decent house for myself and my wife here at the village. I have no plans to continue living in the village with my business idea but rather I will move to the biggest trading centre from here. So the house I will build here, is the house that my family will be living when the visit, but I will later build a bigger house from the proceeds of the business somewhere.
So in conclusion, the money will meant removing me from poverty to prosperity.
What is the happiest part of your day?
I am always happy. It doesn't matter which time of the day.
What is the biggest hardship you've faced in your life?
The biggest hardship I have faced in my life is lack of education. When I was a young boy, I always wanted to excel in my education but I could not due to distance from my village to school. For me to reach at school in time, I was suppose to start off at 5am and to walk few kilometers, to reach at school at 7am or 7:30. Since I was young, my mother could not permit me to go to school alone. She tried her best to mobilise other kids at the village but she could found that most of the parents their had no interest of sending their children at school. She wanted to move to live at the near by village but she could not because that time, she was taking care of her sick mother who later died. Due to disappointments she stopped me from going to school. So the only thing that I would do was helping her with house chores until I grew up. Had it been schools were near, I would have worked hard to reach Form 4 and I to fulfill my dreams of becaming a doctor.
