About the Conference

Conditional Cash Transfer programs provide money to poor people conditional on them making investments in their children's human capital such as school attendance or regular use of preventive health care services. Such programs are relatively new, but have been adopted already in a number of countries. Evaluation results from the first generation of programs show that conditional cash transfer programs are an effective means for promoting human capital accumulation among poor households. There is clear evidence of success in increasing enrollment rates, improving preventive health care and raising household consumption. Despite this promising evidence there are concerns regarding constraints of the supply of social services, tradeoffs between social assistance and human capital formation goals, and the fit, effectiveness and appropriateness under different country conditions--especially for low-income/low-capacity countries.

Objectives
As a follow-up to the previous Mexico (May 2002) and Brazil (April 2004) conferences, the World Bank and the Government of Turkey are co-sponsoring the third international conference on CCT with support from several Donors. The conference intends to bring together practitioners and policy makers from countries representing the full range of countries with experience or interest in designing and implementing CCT interventions.

The main objectives of this conference are to share experience and knowledge among and between countries with extensive experience in CCT and newcomers on what works and what does not work both from a policy and operational perspectives.

Structure
A combination of plenary and breakout sessions, with field visits to illustrate the various themes of the conference. Organizational structure:

• Policy level: 2 days
• Field visits: 1 day
• Operational level: 2 days

Audience
Over 300 people from around the world representing countries implementing or interested in CCT and their counterparts from the World Bank, donor agencies and relevant NGOs. The conference is targeting countries that have CCT interventions, are in the process of designing one, or are contemplating CCT interventions. Priority has been given to countries that send teams with their World Bank counterparts.