The house I am currently living in is in a poor state. It is bending towards the ground, hence making it unsafe for my family to live in. My husband sells palm wine in the village. His earnings are very little because of the little palm wine he harvests from the coconut trees. The ongoing drought has partly affected the harvest in our area. I earn a living through the sale of firewood and currently there are no trees or bushes to fetch firewood from because of the drought. With our house almost falling down, I used the money from my transfer to buy poles and build a new and spacious house that will accommodate the eight members of my family. Because of the poor financial state we are in together with my husband, I bought food in bulk. I bought six packets of maize flour, 2kg of sugar, tea leaves, 2 kg of beans, 2 kg of rice and two jerricans of fresh water for home use. Water is hard to find and we have to buy it from water vendors at very high prices of KSH 50 per 20 liter jerricans.

My aspiration in life has been to support my daughters academic pursuit because she has potential to excel in her studies. Therefore, when I received my transfer, I spent KES 2,000 to clear my daughter's fee arrears since she was almost done with her college. She did a course in mechanical engineering and I am hopeful that she will be able to get a job and support her siblings.

In my opinion, GiveDirectly does well in terms of helping the vulnerable and needy in society. I can tell you that the situation that we were in before we were enrolled in the program was a difficult one. I had lost hope in life. Now that I am receiving the cash it has greatly helped me and I am in the process of making my life better each day.

I am a mother who values education. I want to educate my children so that they will not face the same problem that I currently going through. I have four children who are currently in primary school. I also have a daughter who finished her secondary education but due to the challenge of lack of fees, she was not able to move forward with her education. I did not stop at that I did all that I could and enrolled her in a tertiary college where she is currently learning how to sew clothes. I am very sure once she is done with her course she is going to be independent and will start her own business. The fee required as payment is KSH 2000 per month. Due to the financial crisis, I am currently in I was not able to pay for her studies in the previous month. This meant she will have to stay home until such a time when I was able to pay so that she would continue with the course. Immediately after I received the transfer I spent KSH 2000 to pay the previous debt and I am happy that she is currently back in school. In addition to that, I spent the remaining KSH 1000 buying food for my family.

I was from fetching water at a nearby water pan at around 9 am. I got a notification that I had received money from GiveDirectly. I was very happy and immediately rushed to and withdraw the cash.

It has made big difference in my life in that my kids are still in school. I have food in my house. Without the cash I don’t think I would have managed all that bearing in mind there is a lack of jobs and the manual jobs I am engaged in are not paying that well. So the cash has made a big difference in my life and I am grateful for that.

I spent KSH 1500 on paying school fees for school-going kids. I value education and so upon receiving the funds that were first on my priority list. I also spent KSH 1500 on buying food. I am currently jobless and my spouse engages in manual jobs to provide for the family. I decided to buy the food so that it could help us like family and not starve.  The small jobs I am doing such as fetching water and selling and also fetching firewood and selling have not been able to satisfy the needs of my family well.