"In the coming year and beyond, I hope to continue supporting the education of my 7 children who are still in school. Being the breadwinner for the family because my spouse is old and economically inactive, I am planning to start a small food outlet at our nearby market centre. This will be a reliable source of income that would support the education of the kids as well as provide for the daily basic needs like food for the family."

"I am involved in a small business within my compound, I own a shop where I sell household goods to make a living out of it. My business at the moment has hit headwinds, it is doing badly because the cost of living has gone up, and people do not have enough disposable income. Subsequently, this has affected my business too since I depend on them to buy from me. I used to make sales of up to $15 a day but of late I operate on a turnover of $5 per day. This has affected us from meeting our demands, and as a result, we struggle to raise school fees for our child who is in Emmaland primary school. I am afraid that if the situation persists we may not be able to cater to her school fees and other family needs."

"Life is hard and has so many struggles. We are faced with a myriad of unsurmountable challenges. Day after day we live from hand to mouth. I am a casual laborer who tends on other people's farms for a meager wage while my husband does motorcycle business for someone who pays him at an agreed price of $4.50 per day, then any other amount above that is his take-home. It is a very ambitious target and sometimes he cannot meet and that means he has to come home empty-handed after laboring out there. It is such a bad state of things. Food insecurity is what has pushed us to untold suffering. We have a small piece of land that can hardly sustain any meaningful agricultural produce and as such we have to purchase maize at the nearby Kapkwen market. The cost of the commodity has gone up as a result of the increased cost of living. A 2 kg packet of maize goes at $1.70 which is high for the people of little means like us. Sometimes we go to bed hungry when we are not able to afford it, at such circumstances my children bear the brunt of it all and it worries us a lot."

"Givedirectly is a good organization. Givedirectly send oir money in time and make us to have good shelter and live a decent life."

"It wss difficulty to pay my kids schools, but with my transfer things have improve."

"My life have improve because I'm not regularly visiting my farm like before. At least I can care for the family"

"Givedirectly change my life on the line of financial help, at least this money will help me not to beg around because I'm a blind man. Givedirectly is a great help to me."

"I used some for medication and paid for building materials"

"My plan has always been to build a house but my dream couldn't come to pass due to lock of money.Therefore, when I received my recent transfer, I decided to purchase two bundles of zinc to begin the process."

"The most chlenging thing that we are currently facing is shortage of water. In the recent past we have been getting enough supply of water from a water pan near us. With time, this pan has been strained by the rapidly growing population in my village and prolonged dry seasons. The water that we get from the pan is nowadays very dirty and has a high likelihood of being contaminated. We as a family have even worked hard and bought a 5000 litres capacity water tank but we do not have water in it due to the prolonged periods of going without rain. We can only hope that the government will come in and address the situation at hand by providing us with piped water."