My new goal for my life for the next four months is to expand my house. I have been using part of my transfers to buy iron sheets for the project. I am very optimistic because I am almost finishing buying the required materials. I am only left with looking for a competitive constructor. I will be a very happy person once I finish building this house.

The biggest difference in my daily life in the last four months preceding the current transfer is that I have been in a position to buy the basic needs for my family. I do not have a lot of financial stress unlike before when I had no reliable income. I majorly use my transfer to buy food and other basic needs like clothes for my children because these are the major things I needed in my life. We are staying a happy with my children because we never go hungry and we are smartly dressed. Unlike before when we used to go without food and wore torn clothes. I thank Give Directly for all these changes in my family's life

I expect to live in a more comfortable and spacious house now that I will have finished expanding it according to how I desire it to be. I have big children that require separate rooms for privacy. Once I accomplish this goal of expanding my house I will be a happier mother. In addition to that, we will never be rained on during the winter season

Currently, my life is different as I do have a beautifully finished house that is the envy of the entire village as I plastered using the materials that I bought with the transfers. I also paid casual labourers to help in working on my farm so that I can increase my harvest which we can always consume and the surplus that we can sell to get income for our upkeep.

I have a new goal of saving and buying building materials like iron sheets to help in building a new house for my new wife.

The biggest difference in my daily life is that I have been able to expand my farming. I depend solely on farming for the provision of our daily food. When I am able to pay the extra manpower to work in my farms, it means that my harvest will be more which is good for my family as we get surplus to sell and also consume some to nourish us. I can easily provide food for my family every day even if I do not work twice as much.

I expect to have bought the building materials like iron sheets, poles, timber and nails that I shall have used to build the new house. I expect my new wife and children to be living in a secure and beautiful house that can easily and comfortably accommodate them.

My life is different from how it would have been four months ago in that I have had a better harvest. Before the transfers, I used to harvest 3 sacks of maize in the long rains. This was not a reflection of the hard work I used to put on the farm. With these transfers, I was able to buy farm inputs such as hybrid maize seeds and fertilizers which I used on my farm. As a result, I have realized an increase in my harvest from 3 sacks to 8 sacks which have really helped and changed my life a lot. Thanks to GD.

My additional goal in the next four months is to plaster the house. I would want to plaster it so that I avoid other expenses on the house such as smearing on a monthly basis. I would want to make it strong and durable so that I put my focus on other family needs.

I have always desired to extend my house because it is always small to accommodate my family well. We have always strained and in most cases, my children have always been forced to look for a sleeping place at my neighbor's house. Due to my low income, I had to put up with this condition since I only depend on a small income from casual work of working on other people's farms. When I started receiving the transfers, I used it to buy building materials such as iron sheets, nails, and timber which I used on extending my house. I now have an extra room for my visitors which makes me feel very comfortable inviting friends to my house.

I expect my life to change in the next six months in that I will have plastered my house. I want to ensure I save the transfers on a monthly basis to ensure I buy all the requirements needed to plaster the house.

I am currently healthier than I was months ago because I am no longer worried about how to feed especially whenever I am unable to find any job. This is because whenever I am broke, I can comfortably borrow from the shop because the shopkeepers know that at the end of the months I will receive money from GD and clear their debt making them more than willing to lend.

I would like to plaster my house especially the floor which is currently so dusty. My house is made of mud and usually requires constants repairs, but this has not been possible because my wife who would do that left me years ago and I am not able to do it on my own due to my old age and lack of money to pay for someone else's services.

Receiving these transfers have made my daily life very bearable especially during this famine season when food is scarce and costly. My life without these transfers would have been so terrible because, during these times, there are no casual jobs which are my main source of income, meaning that it would not be easy to put food on my table or take care of my basic needs.

I hope that I will have managed to plaster my floor in the next six months so that I can live in a better environment. Having no wife makes it tough to keep it neat around the house especially with all the dust. I hope to plaster the house so that I can have an easier time cleaning and keeping the house in a more bearable condition.

My life is now different because I have money to spread across my financial needs as opposed to before, when I had very little cash at my disposal. Just like I had already mentioned, I can now easily buy food for my family in addition to having other plans such as making modification of my house, something that I have never been able to achieve in the past. This season I already planted beans in my farm, something that I never did before due to lack of money required to buy the expensive seedlings.

The house I live in today is a temporary structure built using mud and cow-dung which makes it a risky structure to live in. It is very easy for the building to collapse especially during heavy rainy season. My plan right now is to buy bags of cement and sand to change the structure from a mud house to a semi-permanent house. I know it is not easy to make the modification but I have faith that I will be able to achieve this with the money that I will be getting from the organization.

I have been able to get a stable and reliable income from Give directly for the last eight months and the cash has enabled me to budget effectively every month using this amount of money. I used to do casual jobs for people within the village and they normally pay me around 200 KES, an amount that has never been enough for my financial needs. Right now, buying food for my family has been made much easier and it is so hard for my family to go a day without or less food. We even feed on balanced diet, something that never used to happen for us.

I plan to start a small scale business of buying second hand clothes and re-selling in the market area for purposes of generating profits for me. I once tried doing this business before but it collapsed because I had so much financial needs that exceeded the profits I made by then. I now want to revive the business in order to earn more money because I believe I am more settled right now and I am also more wise than how I was before in managing my business. The money generated from the business will be used to buy food for the family and also sort other family financial needs so that I will not have to rely so much on the cash transfers from Give Directly.

Apart from my earlier goals, I would want to buy a motorcycle to help boost my income through motorcycle business.

I was able to get bean seed which I planted in my farm since it was almost going fallow because I did not have enough seeds to plant. I was also able to plaster my house which makes me so happy.

I would want to build a kitchen which will help me with my guests when they visit.

I have been longing to plaster my house so that it may look presentable but since I did not have enough money to do it, it has never happened but since Give directly came, I was able to achieve it. Thanks to Give Directly.