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''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.〔( Paying for Better Parenting - New York Times ) Accessed 12/07/06〕 It is designed to target poverty by providing cash payments to families in exchange for regular school attendance, health clinic visits, and nutritional support.〔(Mexico's Oportunidades Program ) Accessed 12/07/06〕 ''Oportunidades'' is credited with decreasing poverty and improving health and educational attainment in regions in which it has been deployed.〔(Bulletin of the World Health Organization - Reaching Mexico's poorest ) Accessed 12/07/06〕 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.〔(Lessons offered by Latin American cash transfer programmes, Mexico’s Oportunidades and Nicaragua's SPN. Implications for African countries ) Accessed 12/07/06〕 * "Rights holders" - Program recipients are mothers, the caregiver directly responsible for children and family health decisions.〔(SEDESOL - Oportunidades ) Accessed 12/07/06〕 * 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 geographical 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.〔 ==The Political Organization of Progresa-Oportunidades== Progresa-Oportunidades is designed to be a centrally run program that relies on a horizontal integration of programs and services among the various agencies and ministries within the executive branch. This required the establishment of a body with enough power to coordinate the participants in the program and monitor the budget.〔Levy, S. (2006): Progress Against Poverty: Sustaining Mexico's Progresa-Oportunidades Program, Washington, D.C., Brookings Institution Press.〕 Instead of restructuring an old agency, it was decided to form a new agency with all of the appropriate powers and the backing from the president. Although this provided for an easier and faster startup, it also meant that many of the related agency structures, which Progresa-Oportunidades would have to rely upon for its future sustainability, were incompatible with the new program. Officials in related structures such as the Ministry of Health and Education were not provided with the appropriate incentives to channel their work towards Progresa-Oportunidades. Many were individuals who had worked on earlier poverty programs and who now saw their resources shifting in a new direction. Also, officials often had more to gain politically from abandoning this program and starting a new one.〔 As a centrally administered program, Oportunidades allows for low operational costs and a greater level of efficiency in the transmission of benefits directly to the participants in the program. The program has sometimes been criticized for this completely “top down” approach. However, the lack of community participation in the identification of beneficiaries and the allocation of funding also helps to limit the opportunities for corruption at the local level, which has traditionally been a problem with such government-funded programs.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Oportunidades」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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