Months ago, I had not yet cleared my school fees and was afraid that I would not be able to clear it on time considering all the other needs that we had to take care of back at home. Fortunately, I have managed to clear the fees for the entire year and can now comfortably stay in school without any fear of being sent away from school for delayed fee payments during this critical moment when I am revising for the final examination.

I am in my final year of high school and will soon clear the final examinations. Once I am done, I may be idle because there will be no more school, but I want to ensure that I keep myself busy. With the help of my transfers, I will venture into commercial tomato farming once I have harvested the maize that I planted. The transfers will assist me in buying quality seeds, fertilizers and even hire any necessary help that I may require on the farm. This is a way of trying to raise money for my college fees because I am well aware that my mother will not be able to raise the money due to her lack of income, So as I await the results, I will be busy farming.

There was a terrible famine experienced in our area in the last four months where food was very scarce and very expensive. The transfers my mother and I received over that period assisted us tremendously in terms of food and other household needs. As we shared stories with other students from non-benefiting villages of their daily lives during that period, I realized how lucky my family is to be receiving these transfers because their stories of lacking the basic needs such as food were very saddening. Some of those stories were what we also faced sometime back before the program came to our village when we would go hungry as we could not afford more than one meal a day.

I hope that the tomato farming that I am planning to venture into will have materialized into something great financially within the next six months. This will be a way of me trying to save for my college fees and if the project turns out well, I will stick to it for more income.

My life is currently different from how it was four months ago because l am no longer being sent home for school fee as I used to be. I can acquire any personal thing that I need a part from depend on my mother.

My new goal is to improve my already running poultry keeping project. I am planning to improve it so that I get enough income that will enable me afford my fees. I shall have relieved my parents of this one expense.

The biggest difference in my daily life is that l am able to pay my school fee without depending on my mother. Since I started receiving money I have never been sent home for school fee arrears as compared to before when I could stay home for so long because of the arrears. I can easily get my personal things without depending on my mother as I used to.

In the next six months, I expect that the poultry keeping project will be generating me more income. My parents’ income is not that stable that can finance my college education and with this project, I will be able to see myself through college.

I have been able to use the cash in so many ways but the most significant one for me is the fact that I have been able to pay my school fees promptly without delays. I no longer have accumulated balances and the teachers do not send me away every now and then making me to miss classes which really affected my performance at school in the past. At the beginning of every term I used to have accumulated balances of around 5000 KES but that does not happen anymore.

I want to buy seedlings and modern fertilizer from the aggro-vet so that we can use them in the on-coming planting season. The main reason of doing this is to make sure that we get a bumper harvest within the next four to five months from today. Once the bumper harvest is realized then we will sell them to customers within the locality and earn some money in return.

I was able to buy new school uniforms recently around two months ago and the primary reason was because the ones I had by then were so old and torn due to wear and tear effect. If I had not received cash from GD at that time I do not think I would have been in a position to buy the clothes because I never had any cash. Being a student, the only money I can depend is the little pocket money from my parent.

I dream of starting a business of buying chicks and rearing them up to such a time when they will be mature and ready for sell. The reason I want to start this business is to be financially stable in the unforeseeable future. I plan to join the university next year, so in case the money I will have accumulated by that time will not be enough, I will be able to rely on the chicken business where I will sell them out and make some little cash.