In the next year and beyond, am hopeful to have enough savings for my sons fees who are in college right now. I have been getting financial support from friends and relatives through having fundsraisers. Whatever I raise has never been enough for a whole terms fee. They have been in and out of the classes and this has negatively affected their studies. I am hopeful to get a long term solution by selling some of the livestock I raise for a living.

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. Another thing that GiveDirectly does well is that 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. What needs to be done differently is enrolling all the individuals in the household to avoid household conflict. 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. 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 used the transfers to buy a female cow for kshs 40,000. I decided to buy a female cow as it will produce milk for sale and consumption. Initially I had several cows but unfortunately they died during the drought season. After selling the milk produced, I will use the money to buy more cows as rearing livestock is what I do to earn a living. Getting regular and balanced food has been the most difficult challenge my family has been facing. I used the remaining transfers of kshs 10,000 to stock food for my family of five.

It was 6:30 am and I was still in my bed sleeping when suddenly my phone rang notifying me of a new message. I took my phone immediately and I checked what the SMS could all be about. I could not believe my eyes when I saw that I had received KES 55000 from GiveDirectly. I was so happy that I woke up and I shared the wonderful news with my family. They were so happy on hearing this and we celebrated together giving thanks to God. We then sat down together and we started planning on how we were going to spend it.

The biggest difference that the transfer has brought into our lives is that with having bought another cow, we now have more milk than before. It is enough to supply to the school for payment of school fees and we are selling some. The money from the sales is enough to save and use in making other developments.

We spent KES 48000 of our recent transfer on buying another cow. We bought the cow because we wanted something that was going to help us for a long time. We also wanted it to serve as a reminder to us of GiveDirectly. We have been having two cows and they have been of great help to us. We usually supply the milk that we get from the cows to the school where our two children are studying. By doing so, we get to pay for their school fees. Other than dairy farming, we also usually grow crops such as maize and beans that we also usually supply to the school to pay school fees for the children. I am also casually employed as a tractor driver. Other than that, we also spent KES 4500 on clearing the school fees balances for the children, and with the remaining transfer amount, we used it on buying some clothes for ourselves. Thank you so much GiveDirectly for supporting us.