I am currently a secondary school teacher, primarily teaching Form One and Form Four students. In addition to my teaching responsibilities, I also operate a small business selling fried potatoes and fried chicken to make ends meet. My sole aspiration is to build a stone house to provide my family with better living conditions. I am diligently saving from both my teaching salary and business earnings to turn this dream into a reality.

I have a single muddy house with three rooms, where five of us reside. Determined to improve our living conditions, I decided to utilize my monthly transfers for renovation. With $24, I purchased two bags of cement, essential for refurbishing the floor. The remaining $10 went to compensating my hardworking workers, who really worked hard to make my floor look amazing.

I constructed a 3-roomed house 3 years ago, but it is not in a very good condition because it has been destroyed by the rains over the years. This is because the house is made of soil and made worse by the fact that our soil type is sandy. To make the house stronger, durable and presentable, it is paramount that it is plastered, a project that I have been working on for sometime now. I have been plastering the inner part of the house before I can move to the outside part in order to control the amount of dust. So far, the walls are done and I would like to move on to the floor which is quite dusty and affects my children who always suffer from colds and coughs caused by the dust. I plan on saving part of the transfers monthly and purchasing the required materials in small quantities as I am unable to afford all the required items at once due to low income. Once I am done plastering the floor, I will then keep saving and purchasing the materials in small portions until I am able to plaster the entire house.

The past few months were the toughest this year, especially in my village where we had experienced several failed harvests caused by the prolonged drought season that went on for over a year. There was food scarcity and whatever was available was sold a ridiculous price. Truth be told, I have never purchased a packet of 2-kilogram maize flour at anything above $1 dollar before, but this year, it doubled in price and was retailing at more than $2. Maize being our staple food, you can only imagine what everyone went through. During the last three months, all I could think of was how to put food on my family's table and to ensure my children remained in school by ensuring their fees was paid on time. I was unfortunately unable to save any part of my transfers or invest in any projects as I had hoped because the situation was really dire. I am however very thankful that we received a good amount of rains this farming season and we are now just harvesting our crops which has greatly reduced the food prices and eased our living conditions. Now that things are normalizing, I can get back to my stalled plans as these past few months, I have only focused on taking care of the basic household needs and fee payments.

Before I got enrolled in GiveDirectly's transfers, I had begun building a permanent three-roomed house. The current one is mad walled and old hence the need for a better one. It leaks during the rainy seasons, and I hope to renovate it by this year. Monthly, I spend part of the transfer buying cement for that construction. I know that once it is renovated, I shall be able to live in a better place for more than ten years. The current house is mud-walled and unstable. I fear residing in it since it is weak and afraid with heavy rains, it can collapse.

I am a BOM teacher, and I have been experiencing irregular payments of wages. I always bear financial constraints since I struggle to meet my family's needs. Unfortunately, my wife is jobless, and she is always at home. I spent $15 to pay school fees for my two school-going children. One is in grade one, other is in grade three. They had arrears that were bothering me. I am glad that they are comfortably progressing well with their study. I also used the rest of the transfer, $19, to acquire food for my family of four members. I am glad that with the transfer, I could meet my immediate needs, and life has been good for the past few days.

I was definitely beyond happy to realize that the funds had actually been sent out. My immediate priority was focused on nourishment since Christmas season was upon us so I ended up spending KES 1,300 on purchasing eight packets of maize flour. Afterwards I decided to save KES 1,000 so as to prepare for January when my two kids reasume school. Lastly I spent the remaining balance of KES 1,100 on my younger brother who receives treatment monthly ever since he was diagnosed with cancer a while back. As for my funds in November I also happened to use them on my brother so as he would receive treatment.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does very well in making sure they do the enrollment themselves without the influence of other people especially the government officials. We have previously seen various programs spearheaded by the government where there is a lot of unfairness in terms of distribution of aids. With GiveDirectly, everyone had an equal opportunity to benefit from the transfers and no one was discriminated against whatsoever. On the other hand, I do not find anything so amiss with how GiveDirectly conducts its operations.

I used $20 to facilitate my brother's transport to hospital. He has been making monthly trips to Kenyatta National hospital and I have been the one providing him with transport as he struggles with other bills that comes with the routine check ups. I used another $5 to pay school fees for one of my children and the amount that remained of $5 was used to buy food for my family. I am a father of two but I take care of 7 other family members; my two ageing parents and my five siblings who are still in school. I am a trained teacher but I have not been able to secure a government job yet. I thank God and GiveDirectly for enabling me meet the needs of my family. I work in a local school where I earn $150 per month and this amount was way too little to comfortably feed my large family and meet other pressing needs at the same time. Getting a monthly transfer from GiveDirectly was a major boost to me and the fact that some other family members do receive the money has made life more easy and bearable for all of us. Despite some few challenges here and there, we are happy that the money has improved our livelihoods as a family.

For the past six months, I have seen members of the neighboring village who were previously enrolled excited about the progress they have made with their transfers. This left me wondering when luck would fall on us. Luckily, we were enrolled months later but still, I was eager to receive the money. You can imagine how excited I was upon receiving a confirmation message of the receipt of the first transfer.

After months of being in the cold as a result of a faulty door, having it replaced became a priority and this is the biggest difference since I started receiving the transfers. Meeting the medical expenses of my nine-year-old brother who is terminally ill drained me financially and the income I earn from supporting a local school where I am paid by the school board of management could not afford all the expenses. I am excited as we sleep, our security is guaranteed since we now have a door and I owe this to the GiveDirectly transfers.

I am a teacher by profession unfortunately, I have not secured employment through the Teachers Service Commission which is a government body that employs all teachers. But I thank God a local school granted me an opportunity to teach where am employed and paid by the school's Board of Governors. My meager salary as a school teacher cannot meet my family obligations. I have school-going children and a terminally ill brother ailing with cancer and indeed this among other factors has drained me financially. Though, this is something that caught us by surprise, as a family we have to look for the right medication to ensure he feels better. With the KES 3000, I paid KES 500 as school fees. This enabled my school-going children to resume their studies. I further spent KES 2000 to replace my house door which was faulty and spent the remaining KES 500 was spent on food.