“My family often went to bed hungry, my children were sent home from school for unpaid fees and I was buried in debt,“ said Karisa, a father of five.
He used the cash to lease a plot of land with two neighbours in his village of Milore, install an irrigation system and start farming.
“If they had given me food, it would have been long gone by now,“ Karisa told AFP.
GiveDirectly believes charities and NGOs should stop handing out things like food and school books, and start just sending people cash.
Fears the money would be misused or wasted were unfounded, it said. One Kenyan study found that families generated $2.50 for every $1 received.
'Poverty doesn't wait'
Traditional aid systems spend vast amounts on planning, supplies, transport, offices and expensive Western staff.
GiveDirectly still has overhead costs, but says 80 percent of donations goes directly into the hands of recipients.
But for improving livelihoods of the poor, cash can be effective and fast.
Other aid agencies have embraced the concept over the past 10-15 years as hundreds of studies have shown its efficacy.
Even USAID -- before being gutted by the administration of President Donald Trump -- finally backed the use of cash payments in a policy paper last October, after years of internal pushback.
'Dilemma'
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), a medical organisation, has twice used cash transfers when markets collapsed: in Syria in the mid-2010s and recently in Sudan's Darfur region.
“Cash for healthcare remains very rare,“ said MSF’s advocacy head, Tarak Bach Baouab. “We want to be sure of the quality of our programmes so we prefer sourcing the drugs and equipment ourselves.”
“We’re not there to tell people what to do with their lives. It’s not very empowering and it creates a lot of dependency,“ Baouab said.
GiveDirectly sees this as a selling point for giving cash wherever possible.
“We are giving them dignity and we are giving them choice.”
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