"Imagine running your own tailoring business using your own machine and in your own premise where you pay no rent! I am a trained tailor and a single parent of one. It has been so hard to accumulate enough from the business to sustain the $8.5 monthly operation cost of my business together with my household's needs. Receiving this money means a new improved life in my business and better life for my child as I will be able to: own my brand new sewing machine, build a 1 roomed semi permanent shop where I will pay no rent for and fabric varieties to sustain my expanding customer base!"

"My community is blessed with a conducive environment for livestock keeping, especially commercial dairy farming. My husband and I are planning to spend about KES 30,000 of our first transfer to buy a dairy cow. We believe this is a sustainable investment because of its prolificacy and ready and accessible market for our milk products."

"The biggest hardship I have faced in my life is having to struggle with my education.It has been a long journey to reach to this point where I now have completed a diploma course.My parents struggled to pay my secondary school fees and I was in and out of school which affected my performance.I performed lower than expected which forced me to settle for a diploma course instead of an undergraduate course. When I was in college I used to do casual jobs like washing clothes inorder to raise my school fees.It has been a long journey and here I am again struggling with unemployment.I have not secured a job 3 years down the line."

"I have invested some money in tea leaves that I will earn a bonus within the next four months from. In the next six months, I expect to have bought a heifer and will have a higher amount of money to further invest in tea leaves. I see myself to be doing better than now in terms of the tea-leaves business and reduction of daily casual jobs that I will be involved in this will always be my hope of a better future."

"My family lives in a very small house which is already old.The house is often crowded and cannot accomodate all of us and we have always wished that we could get money to build another one.Receiving this money means that our wish has been granted and with it we will build a better and bigger house.With the remainder we will buy a cow.This to us will be a constant reminder of the great help we received from GiveDirectly"

"I started a small business;I buy chicken around my village and take them to sell in nearby markets.I invested my hard earned savings from casual jobs in the business but unfortunately it didnt yield any profits.In fact,I incurred huge losses.At that time,there was a high supply in the market and I was forced to sell at throw away prices hence I lost most of my capital.This is the biggest hardship I have faced"

"Receiving this money means that my family will finally be able to own a cow.Since i got married in 2014,we have been buying milk from a neighbour's house.This means that we have to spend more every month yet there is no stable source of income.Having our own will provide some income through sale of milk too"

"Currently, my second born daughter is a candidate in the nearby primary school. Soon she will be sitting for her KCSE and I am optimistic that she will be joining the secondary school. For every parent that means more school fees have to be paid in that next level of education. I now have a plan to revive the family saving plan which we had in our household which I expect to have accumulated a good sum of money in the next six months. This is a plan to keep up with the payment of the school fees timeline which has always existed in the secondary schools whenever students are joining."

"Recieving this money means I will build an iron roofed house because the grass thatched house I currently occupy is very small in size and not enough to accomodate my family.I will also buy household items because we dont have what is required in a home.This will make my household a complete home with these household items."

"The biggest hardship is that I dont have enough land yet I have many boys who will need land when they grow up.Besides this, our yields are very low due to limited access to land and the high number of people in my family, every little food is consumed so fast."