"What a life! I really work hard but do not gain much this because I sometimes have the seeds but no fertilisers and I end up having poor yields, I got a loan from SACCO which I used to buy seeds and fertilisers and as the crops were flourishing flash floods washed them away this frustrated me, SACCO took my assets which they sold to make up for their money. I ended up making a loss , I therefore consider financial constraints as my biggest challenge."

"I have been saving part of the monthly transfers in order to buy a second-hand motorcycle that I was offered. A friend who is employed by a neighbor to provide taxi services has been giving me the motorcycle to use, though not daily. I do not have any job currently, and were it not for his help, it would have been hard for me to provide for my family. My goal currently is to ensure that I save enough, top up my savings with a small loan, and buy a second-hand motorcycle. Having my own motorcycle will be advantageous to me because I will not be paying hiring expenses to anyone."

"I currently have five children enrolled in school, and as their parent, my goal is to see them excel in their education. I am a single parent with no income, so raising fees for them has not been easy. Even providing food for them has been a challenge. My objective is to use the monthly transfers to pay for their education in order to avoid them being discontinued."

"In December of last year, I completed my O'level, and currently, I am just at home. Before the year began, I set out a goal to save money to raise my college fees because I had desired from my childhood to be a journalist. I intend to enroll in college in the latter part of this year to pursue a degree in mass communication. My desire to become a news anchor has motivated me to put in more effort. I will save a proportion of my transfers to realize this goal is fulfilled as long as I continue to obtain my monthly transfer."

"I enrolled in a beauty therapy course, and I intend to finish it this year. I have given myself the objective of saving my monthly payments as live assets to open a beauty salon. Therefore, I aim to buy and raise goats from my monthly transfers. Since I still do not have any child, I hope and believe that by raising livestock, I easily will support my children's education easily when they come. As a result, our struggle as a family in supporting the children to attain formal education will have drastically reduced then."

"I am planning to hire a tractor to assist in farming my piece of land of 10 acres, which is about kshs 50,000. I do subsistence farming for a living and when it is done by casual workers it is time-consuming and very expensive. I am expecting to have a good life, with the good rains I will harvest about 25 bags of maize and beans, of which I will use part of it for consumption while the rest will be for sale. I will therefore open a savings account for my children's school fees. This will help in paying school fees in advance and I am expecting them to have good grades which will be a factor when choosing the best courses to undertake in college education. I am having an additional goal of buying a brand-new motorcycle on loan. It costs kshs 400,000. This is meant for business purposes, especially during online deliveries."

"I do subsistence farming for a living. I am planning to start up a small business supplying maize to boarding schools. I usually do it although to homesteads on order. In the near future, I will be expanding and mostly the deliveries will be done by the motorcyclist as they will be in large quantities. The profits from the business will be taking care of my kids' school fees."

"In my opinion, what GiveDirectly does well in this program is that we receive the transfers in lumpsum amounts. This helps in planning as one is in a position to do something huge as compared to when the transfers are given in small instalments. The unlearned recipients are taught how to use mpesa. This has reduced the number of theft cases in the community as most of us managed to change our pins to a more secure code. To avoid household conflict, what needs to be done differently is enrolling all the individuals in the household. During enrollment, those individuals who did not have responsibilities by then were left out of the program yet these are the same people who steal from their old and vulnerable parents. Give Directly staff are very transparent during the enrollment process, they are so keen during the verification process and this ensures that none is left out during registration to the program. Another thing that needs to be done differently is enrolling all the communities in a specific village for uniformity purposes and this will prevent too many complaints coming from the communities that are left out during the registration to the programs."

"In the next year and beyond, I am planning to start up a small business of kiosk, I will be constructing a small shop nearby my home. Shops and supermarkets are far away from my community and people walk far away to the shopping centres since they are located far away from us. I am therefore anticipating that it will attract as many clients as possible since it will be near them. Besides, I am also planning to do dairy farming so as to get milk for my family's consumption and for sale as well."

"I had wanted for a long time to try my hand at poultry farming. Primarily, layers are needed for the egg business. I purchased 15 of them, thanks to the transfers from GiveDirectly. We sell and eat them domestically as well. An egg goes for $0.13, while a tray fetches $3.9. The funds found me when my main source of income was the quarry at home where I sell stones. I sell a truck load for $10 and add it to the maize we grow and sell from our 50 by 100-meter farm with my wife. To relieve us of the burden of paying school fees, I planned to use some of the funds to pay for my four children's tuition. My oldest child is in Form 4 and my second child is in Form 2, both at the same school. My third and forth children are in the same primary school again, and I'm in grades 7 and 3, respectively. Their fees are $80 each per term for the two in secondary and $40 and $5 each per term for the two youngest, respectively. The funds were a major blessing in that they allowed us to move our family forward as a whole and make lasting purchases that would impact our lives positively."