"What GiveDirectly does well is helping the less fortunate in the community to upgrade their lives. Personally my life will never be the same again and so is to many more others whose their life's story will change forever."

"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."

"All I would want to do is continue to expand my family. I fully understand how my business's current growth will lead to a brighter future for all of us. I am striving to ensure I can get to the point where I am making enough money to support my family financially without worrying."