"I am a single mother of three children and for the longest time, I have been practicing farming on my fathers small piece of land and thus, I have not been able to harvest enough for the family. This has in turn made life difficult for me because I have to utilise the small income that I get from doing casual jobs to buy food, pay school fees and cater for other basic needs. Being enrolled in the program was a great breakthrough for me because I spend both my first and second transfers to buy a two acre piece of land. Moving forward I am hopeful that I will be able to do farming on this piece of land and I will harvest enough both for domestic and commercial purposes."

"At present the only challenge we are facing are hunger and ill health. Due to erratic rains we didn't harvest any maize from our 0.5 acre farmland this year. Our staple food, in this family, is nsima from maize flour but as we speaking to you now we don't have any stock of that. This has made us resort to millet for food and our survival. When it comes to my health, I suffer from hypertension and I frequent the hospital visits due to this. I go atleat once a month to seek healthcare services. As such I am not as productive as I would like to be in helping to provide for my family."

"Currently the only challenge we are facing we are facing in our household is lack of food. From our previous harvest, in April this year, we only got 2 bags of maize for food from our 1 acre farm land. This lasted until October and we have had to depend on casual labour from Press company for our survival since then. This hasn't been easy with our old age and deteriorating health."

"Currently the only challenges I am facing are lack of food, poor housing and means of transportation. I have a 2 acre farmland where I grow maize and on a good year I get 46 bags from it. However, this hasn't been the case lately for I get less than that number these days. For instance, last harvesting season, April 2022, me and my family only got 2 bags of maize from it. I attribute this to the fact that we didn't apply fertilizer since we couldn't afford it. To add on that, we are currently living in this house that leaks whenever it rains and this renders us helpless especially at night for we lack the comfort of a home that we need. Additionally, I wish we had a bicycle for transportation but due to financial constraints we are unable to afford that too and therein we have to walk distances for some of our endeavours as a household."

"The challenge I'm meeting is lack of food in my house. This is because we had no harvests this season because we had no fertiliser. To compensate this, I go do business where I boil corn and sell it. My husband is a barber man and that's how we fend for ourselves. It's not enough but we manage what we make."

"The challenge I meet is money. I struggle to make money for food and my children's school fees. I go to Demeta to do work and buy food with that and also save some of it for fees. I'm left with 3 kids, in grade 11, 7 and 2 respectively. It is my hope to educate them all. My husband left 3 years ago and doesn't support us. He went back to his villa and that for me is a divorce so I work as a man to maintain my household."

"The biggest challenge is food. I farm but the rains come late and stop early hence yielding nothing. This is a big problem because once you have no food, you can't do anything else on development because whatever you make goes to food. I go to Demeta company to do piece work and we get paid $9.8 for 5 days, Monday to Friday. To ensure going back for work next time, we bribe the farm managers with $2. All the villages surrounding the farm all rely on working there so sometimes you just bribe so that you are guaranteed work again which means food in my household."

"The challenge in my household is food. This is because people have money to employ us for casual work. Us not finding money makes us starve because we rely on the casual work to sustain ourselves. I sell fresh maize but sometimes there's just too many of us selling the maize with no customers, in the end we return with the maize and eat at home which cripples our capital. Eventually the business dies."

"My biggest challenge is food. This is because the prices of food have skyrocketed. Good thing I have a small business were I sell fresh maize. From there I am able to buy basic needs for my family. I barely manage but at least I have food in the house. My children are not hungry."

"GiveDirectly transfers enabled me to expand my business. I do hem work, and the money enabled me to purchase a sewing machine. I charge $20 per item to sew for people. That could be an outfit or a top and bottom combination. My company is located at Mariani Center, and my husband owns a boda boda within the same complex. He earns between $4 and $5 per day, leaving us with little to save. The funds enabled me to further pursue my farming passion, particularly as a livestock farmer. I purchased two female goats, which now live with us on our 2-acre farm. The food we grow, maize, is primarily for human consumption and provides little to no financial benefit. The transfers are no doubt assisted us in covering expenses such as tuition fees for our two children attending Mariani School, both in Grade 1 @and PP1, for whom tuition is $5 and $12, respectively. GiveDirectly has been a tremendous blessing to me and my family, and we will never forget it."