The Corner Project started in 1998 as an educational resource center for campesino children. When area youths got involved and began initiating projects, an educational exchange program evolved that brought groups from the U.S. to learn from the local community and share their skills.
In 2004 a series of requests for crisis assistance from families of migrants to the U.S. alerted them to an emerging problem for the most vulnerable families in an area relatively new to migration. The Corner Project responded by initiating programs using the new communications technologies to help families stay in touch with migrant relatives in the U.S. and deal with problems before they turn into family-fragmenting crises.
A summer program helps migrant children cope with parents' absence and encourages them to stay in school, while Malinalco's master artisans who help teach these children work with a growing team to design and produce beautiful hand-crafted products for domestic and export sales, thus creating local earning opportunities.
The Corner Project is pleased to be instrumental in helping area migrants reunite with their families, and take pride that their team includes returned migrants, who find in the production of fine hand-crafted products a way to help support their families.
Since 2005 the Corner Project has found that focusing on the challenges faced by the families and children of migrants from our region has provided an effective way to help those in greatest need while beginning to create earning opportunities and explore new options for this area's future development.
The temple carved into the mountain that rises above Malinalco's central plaza was the site of their most important rites. The centerpiece is the stone altar carved out of the living rock in the shape of a huge eagle.
