"I have seven children and work as a hawker selling local toothbrushes (sourced from twigs) which earn me as little as $2. My wife is unemployed, and it has been a struggle to support my family by myself. When I received my cash transfer, I used $5 to pay part of the outstanding school fees and used $7 to buy three chicks and started chicken rearing. The other $10 was spent on buying food and the remaining cash was used to pay an outstanding debt of foodstuff bought in a nearby shop. The fund was so helpful because at the time I received them, my business was on the low, with no food and outstanding debt which would not allow us to borrow any more food from our nearby shop. I am grateful to the Give directly support program."

"I own a business where I sell sugar, tea leaves, and sardines. I started the business in 2021. The business has been slow, on a good day I would get $6 and in the evenings I would use the money to buy food for my family. With the recent transfer, I spend $10 on school fees for my two children who are in Secondary school, stocked my business with sardines for $10, bought one chicken for $3, and finally bought food for $7. I have six children, five are in school and one is two years old. This transfer has helped me expand my business, I have been getting a profit of $7 a day"

"On the withdrawal day, I bought a sack of maize for $60. This was the first thing I did because hunger had struck us and drought had no mercy on us. I am happy because my family got some food which took them some time and rested from the tiring job of making charcoals. Since I had started investing in livestock from the first transfer, I continued by buying a cow for $170 and four chickens for $12. I also bought four iron sheets for $44 to renovate my house. In addition, I bought four plastic chairs because I had only one chair at home. This was shameful once I receive visitors and I had to borrow from neighbors or offer the visitors some logs to seat on. I saw it prudent to keep the remaining amount for the family's use."

"I started school at the age of 10. My parents could not afford to take me earlier. I am 21 years old now in grade six thriving to finish my education. In school, my classmates are younger than me and sometimes it can be embarrassing. I spent the September transfer to pay $14 to the school, bought two chickens at $9, and bought a dress at $4.5. We are ten children in the family and my parent strain to take us all to school. I am happy I can help out with the school fees."

"I used $18 of the September transfer to purchase a goat(kid) that I plan to rear before selling it, $4.5 for two chickens, and bought two packs of maize flour at $4.5. I produce charcoal for a living and my husband takes it to the market. A sack costs $7.2 and within a week we sell three to four sacks. The money is spent on food. I have nineteen chickens and five goats that I rear at home both for domestic and commercial use. I sell them whenever I need money to pay school fees for my four children."

"Investing in livestock has been my desire for a while. Besides the goats which I already had, I used $150 of the second transfer to buy three additional goats alongside four sheep for $40, eight chickens, and two ducks for $16. I opted to invest more in goats because they are cheaper compared to cows and they have ready markets. After that, I added $50 to the remaining amount and constructed a new two-room block house. The $50 had remained from the first transfer. The reason for building this house is because the house I lived in was in a poor state. Leave alone leaking during the rainy season, it was also on the verge of collapsing because the poles had been destroyed by termites. After my calculations, I realized that renovating the house was more expensive than building a new one."

"Give Directly has done well in giving out monthly transfers. The duration at which we were all enrolled is quite a long time, which will enable most of the villagers to change their lifestyles. Personally, in the next five years, I intend to have several chickens and goats which at the moment I do not have"

"I am a teacher by profession and recently got married and moved out of my parent’s house to a different town. My husband is also a teacher, but we are both unemployed. When I got to my home place, the land and climate differed from the one back home. Since I was unemployed, I started farming vegetables like kale, spinach, spring onions, and cabbage. Receiving the funds from Give directly enabled me to not only farm vegetables but also rear chickens. Whenever I received the funds, I would buy seeds, manure, and chicken. Recently when I received my transfer, my small brother who is at school visited me when schools were closed. I used all the $12 as transport for my brother to go back to school and bought him some of the school requirements, like textbooks, exercise books, and some of his items to be used while at school, with the remaining $18."

"With a small family of three and currently enrolled in a degree course at the University, I have a lot of potential to do a lot in order to fully provide for my family as it grows. I am glad that the first and second transfers sparked significant projects that are now picking up steam. Even after injecting $160 of my second transfer, my new goal is to expand the poultry project. The project has helped to meet daily household bills by selling eggs, and it has a long-term goal of selling mature chickens to potential buyers in the community and beyond."

"I have been saving all my money from the three transfers I have gotten to buy a water tank. I have twenty-three goats and thirty chickens and nine ducks. They all need food and water and with the drought that we are currently experiencing water has been expensive. I plan to trap rain in the tank during the rainy season. The tank costs $15 and as for now, I have saved $6."