"It was still early in the morning when I received a message alert on my phone. Since I was awake, I decided to read it to know who the sender was. Upon realizing that GiveDirectly had sent me the money, I became so happy as I knew that my dream of building a house for my family would soon be realized."

"Receiving this money means getting financial support to educate my children and acquire livestock. "

"Receiving this money means getting support for my children to go to school."

"Being the sole breadwinner, providing for basic needs like food,shelter of my family has been my biggest challenge especially educating my child. Being an illiterate securing a good job is very hard the only hope is charcoal burning, considering the nature of this job being tiresome and laborious it earns me very little at most 2 dollars per day. Sometimes I am forced to sleep hungry in order to pay school fees for my kid. I have wished to return to my livestock rearing career but this dream has never materialized."

"Having done research and realized motorcycle business was a major source of employment to many youths, I decided to start a motorcycle spare part vending business. Unfortunately, the capital I had at that time made it impossible to run it and collapsed since I could not afford to stock the spare parts that most clients wanted as they were very expensive. In order to make an income I got employed in a nearby primary school where I am teaching class one pupils. The income has been very little which only serves on meeting my family's daily needs only. The biggest difference in my daily life is that I am self employed since I have reopened this business again with GiveDirectly's transfer. The profits that I get from my retail motorcycle spare part shop as well as my income, I am saving with the intention of expanding it to be a larger scale business. This is because I believe it will be more of a turning point since the generated income from the business will be massive to improve my standards of living and create employment as well ."

"I saw a Mpesa confirmation message early that morning. When I checked what the message was all about, I realized Give Directly had sent me the first transfer. I felt happy about this message because it came as a surprise. I knew they would definitely send it although I didn't expect it would be that day. This message gave me hope of transforming my life completely."

"I was awoken by a message alert early in the morning. I curiously checked my phone and I was greatly amused when I confirmed that I had received my first transfer from GiveDirectly. I felt happy and thankful to GiveDirectly for the financial assistance that I had just received."

"My life is different from how it was in that I am no longer stressed like I used to be before I started receiving these transfers. As a widow, I had various needs to take care of. The main burden was paying school fees for my bright children who were in high school. The money really helped me to offset their fee balance. Today when they go to school I feel at peace because I paid school fees for the whole year. When they come back for their holidays, I am also not worried because I have enough food that I planted using the transfers."

"Before, I operated a small business at the nearby shopping center and the profits were not enough to meet both basic needs then save to build a house. My life is different than it would have been if I never received this transfers in that I have built a spacious house for a comfortable stay of my family and an extension which serves as my business premise . Currently ,my children have a place to sleep and do their private studies without any disturbances unlike before. I no longer shy away when I have visitors because I have enough space to host them. I am also glad that I have cut the cost of paying rent for the business premise that I used to hold my business. Therefore, these cut costs have assisted me a lot in boosting the capital of my business of which I am grateful to GiveDirectly."

"Lack of sufficient finances has been our biggest hardship in life. My husband, a teacher by profession, took a loan 2 years ago to build the house we live in and has been paying it from his salary ever since. This has affected so many other financial areas such as education for the children and even food provision especially when the rains have failed and we have to buy food from shops which is more expensive than growing your own. We had to cut down on so many other expenses too so we can survive with the little he now brings home, for example he now has to walk for over an hour to get to his workplace instead of using a motorcycle like he used to so he can save the 200 shillings and spend it on food etc. "