Wikipedia
Oportunidades ( English: Opportunities) (now rebranded as Prospera) is a government social assistance ( welfare) program in Mexico founded in 2002, based on a previous program called Progresa, created in 1997. It is designed to target poverty by providing cash payments to families in exchange for regular school attendance, health clinic visits, and nutrition support. Oportunidades is credited with decreasing poverty and improving health and educational attainment in regions where it has been deployed.
Key features of Oportunidades include:
- Conditional cash transfer (CCT): To encourage co-responsibility, receipt of aid is dependent on family compliance with program requirements, such as ensuring children attend school and family members receive preventative health care.
- "Rights holders": Program recipients are mothers, the caregiver directly responsible for children and family health decisions.
- Cash payments are made from the government directly to families to decrease overhead and corruption.
- A system of evaluation and statistical controls to ensure effectiveness.
- Rigorous selection of recipients based on geographic and socioeconomic factors.
- Program requirements target measures considered most likely to lift families out of poverty, focusing on health, nutrition and children's education.
Oportunidades has become a model for programs instituted in other countries, such as a pilot program in New York City, the Opportunity NYC, and the Social Protection Network in Nicaragua. Other countries that have instituted similar conditional cash transfer programs include Brazil, Peru, Honduras, Jamaica, Chile, Malawi and Zambia.