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At the age of 5, Iva Brito’s parents moved her and her two siblings from Cape Verde to New Bedford, with the aim of providing them with a quality education. But growing up in the Bay Village area of New Bedford’s South End, Brito learned an important lesson outside the classroom that shaped her indelibly.
The virtues of community.
Relocating to New Bedford from off the coast of West Africa, Brito was introduced to a new culture and knew little of the English language. But the Cape Verdean community that welcomed and assisted her family served as a lasting example of how to live together and nurture others.
Inspired by this upbringing, Brito has gone on to devote much of her life to healing and strengthening the local community in a range of ways. By applying her talents, heart and intellect, she seeks to enhance the community through initiatives that bring restoration.
In 2021, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Brito launched a pair of programs to extend her healing outreach — the Soul Calling retreats and Iva Brito Consultancy. By employing a variety of modalities and approaches, she has built on her experiences as an educator, mother, artist and social worker to assist both individuals and organizations with the tools that can result in an improved life experience, and have ripple effects throughout families, businesses and communities.
The Soul Calling retreats are held yearly at Round the Bend Farm in South Dartmouth. The day-long events were originally designed for women, but they were soon extended to events for men. The majority of attendees are from diverse racial backgrounds.
Previous to these endeavors, Brito was selected to be the founder and director of the Bristol Community College Women’s Center, a position she held from 2018 though 2020. Before that, she headed BCC’s Gateway to College Program, assisting students at risk of dropping out.
For more than a decade, Brito has been a licensed social worker, a role she aspired to after working with the Department of Children and Families.
She is also a poet and a visual artist. In 2016, she published a book of her poems, “Essence, Tones, Whispers and Shouts.” In 2018, her art was featured as an artist-in-residence at the New Bedford Whaling National Historic Park.
A graduate of the New Bedford public schools, Brito earned degrees from UMass Amherst, a master’s degrees from UMass Boston, and completed advanced graduate studies at Salve Regina.
Today she lives in the West End with her 9-year old son.
Brito spoke with The Light about her myriad roles, her upbringing, her inspirations, and her desire to bring healing to the community.
New Bedford Light: What inspired you to start the Soul Calling Retreats?
Iva Brito: I created the Soul Calling retreats because I recognized that so many people, especially women, caregivers and community leaders, spend so much of their time caring for everyone else but don’t have a space where they’re cared for.
I was working at the Women’s Center at BCC where I was the director, and I really saw the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women and caregivers.
It’s called Soul Calling because I was called to create a space where folks and women can rest, restore and connect with themselves so they can be a better version of themselves, and can go back to their families and communities restored.
I believe that restoration is not a luxury, it’s an essential infrastructure for thriving communities. That’s part of my philosophy. That was the catalyst for the retreats — seeing the need for women to come together, heal and restore in community and in nature, through culture, creativity, and connection.
The big part of Soul Calling retreats is that it is a community investment. That’s why I’m so passionate about this — we’re in a world that has so much pain, and so we need to heal collectively. This work is investing in the community for collective healing.
NBL: Why did you expand to have retreats for men?
IB: After our first women’s retreat, the women that were part of it asked me to create the same space for the men in their lives — their husbands and sons — because they found it really powerful and they wanted to bring that home to their community and their family. As the quote goes, “When you heal a woman, you heal a community.” And that’s a beautiful reflection of the love for the men in our lives.
After giving it some time and thought, I realized that if we’re really going to talk about healing it really has to be a collective, it has to be all parts of the community. That’s what led to it. It’s not something that I intended, but because of the women saying that there was a need for it.
NBL: Why do people need healing?
IB: There are multiple reasons. I think it’s part of our evolutionary path. We come into this world and we face different things, and it’s a process of remembering our power. Remembering how we can really tap into our innate powers. Sometimes we need spaces within the journey to remind us of that and to assist us.
Healing is a part of everyone’s individual journey, and embracing that as a beautiful thing is part of the work we do — celebrating and creating the joyous moments along the way. I think that’s an important part of the healing journey.
There’s many ways to heal, and in the work we do we are very mindful of that. We use different modalities, whether it’s nature or sound or movement, it’s always connecting and listening to the client, the individual. Seeing what’s best for that particular person or organization.
NBL: Why do you think the retreats have been successful?
IB: There was a lot of intention and research and love put into it. As I mentioned, there was a calling and thinking about how to serve the women who were coming into this space. The location was intentional — we picked [Round the Bend Farm] believing in their mission.
Also, the intention of giving people healthy food that they receive as part of the day. Also, connecting with nature and its healing power, having people come back to a relationship they had with the land, with so many of us being disconnected from nature in many ways because we live in urban societies. …
But the simple answer is that there is a lot of intention, understanding and love about how to best make us feel welcomed, restored and healed in that space.
NBL: Where did your life perspective come from? How did you arrive at where you are today?
IB: Definitely being raised by two amazing individuals. My parents gave me a strong sense of identity — who I am, my Cape Verdean culture, my African culture, my roots. And the power of being a woman and the power of giving back to the community.
All of these values were embedded in me with a sense of activism as well. My mom is an educator and my dad is an activist as well. Learning from others in the community and understanding that through the community how harm is done many times collectively. So healing needs to be done collectively as well.
NBL: Why did your parents decide to relocate from Cape Verde to New Bedford?
IB: They relocated because they wanted better education opportunities for my siblings and I. My mom was an educator in Cape Verde for over 20 years and she understood the limitations of education in Cape Verde and wanted an opportunity for us to go to college.
Many of the islands on Cape Verde didn’t have colleges, so they came here as an investment in our futures. So I’m really grateful for the sacrifices they made because they both had good jobs and careers and they wanted us to have a better chance at life by living in the U.S.
We had connections in New Bedford. My mom’s dad, Querino Perreira, lived in New Bedford and that was a big reason for us to move here. He was a veteran of World War II and a really proud Cape Verdean American.
We moved to Bay Village, and he welcomed us in, along with other Cape Verdeans in the area. That’s the beautiful thing about living in New Bedford — we’re embraced by other Cape Verdeans that had arrived prior. It was beautiful to be able to go to Gomes School. I used to walk to Gomes School, which was named after Alfred J. Gomes, a Cape Verdean who was prominent in that community.
So I was fortunate to move to an area where it was an easier transition perhaps than it would have been in other cities in Massachusetts.
NBL: You didn’t speak English where you arrived. What was the experience like to move to a new country at the age of 5?
IB: We communicated as a family and we met other Cape Verdean families. I remember our first Christmas — Mary Barros, the Cape Verdean city councilor, welcomed us to spend our first Christmas with her family.
She really helped us to know how to navigate winter here in the U.S., because we came in the summer, and she helped us prepare with clothing and other things. We had other folks who believed in the motto that “It takes a village,” and they brought us in and supported us.
Then I went to Gomes School and learned the language. It was learning to navigate a new culture, a new language, but still being rooted in who we are and not forgetting the culture we had before and continue to have in the U.S.
When I became fluent in English it helped a lot. Language is a big part of culture, and when I was able to feel dominant in the language I could make friends and be able to do different things. I think language was the changing factor and made me feel more comfortable.
There were challenges as well, because back then, unlike now, our culture wasn’t always embraced. Sometimes we were seen as greenhorns, but within the Cape Verdean community there was always love, there was always this mutual understanding of why we were here and supporting each other, so that outweighed the negatives.
NBL: What progress have you seen for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the area and nationally?
IB: As a community we have strong roots. That’s our foundation. I think we need to be reminded of that. I think there’s a lot of amazing leaders in our community that are doing the work to support BIPOC communities.
There’s a lot of events and organizations that are looking at how we can be more equitable as a community. We can have different perspectives, have more voices come to the table. If we’re working in silos we’ll never move forward as effectively as if we work in community, listening and hearing how we can best serve this community, not from a top-down approach but from an approach of knowing that each person has value in our community.
NBL: What does the end game of social justice look like for you? Do you foresee a day when it might not be necessary to do this work?
IB: That would be great (laughs).
The work of social justice, I think, is always tied to healing. And that healing is always looking to be whole as individuals. So there’s healing as individuals but also as a community.
As we know, especially in the U.S., there has been a history of harm, collective harm, especially to BIPOC individuals. So we have to acknowledge that harm. So often it gets treated as if it didn’t happen, especially now.
And understanding that harm and understanding how we heal from that and how we are just in our practices and equitable in these practices in order to collectively heal from that harm.
I think we’re past the point of awareness. People have a better understanding of how harmful these effects have been in our history, and the different “isms” that impact us. But what actions we take for folks to really see that change is really being affected and helping to heal our community.
NBL: What did you learn during your time as the director of the Women’s Center at BCC?
IB: That was a great experience. It was interesting to start something from scratch, being the inaugural director. The artist in me really enjoyed the creativity of starting something new.
It was learning the power of young folks and creating spaces for them to have advocacy and a safe space at the college. If there was an issue they could come to us and I was really proud of that. It was a space where students could be heard and be activists within the college, a space to create learning about different experiences that impact us.
It really highlighted the power when we work within the community and let the voices of the community be heard. It can create amazing things.
NBL: What inspires you as a writer and a visual artist?
IB: Several things inspire me as an artist. Definitely nature, the art of others, and the human spirit. I’m inspired by people’s stories — we have so many amazing stories. The power to persevere. I think that our stories are sacred, they are a way that we can collectively learn from each other about how connected we are and inspire each other. Stories are very inspiring to me.
NBL: What led you to become a social worker?
IB: It was the passion to help others, to support community, activism and advocacy for others. I came to this community as an immigrant, English is not my first language. So I’ve had my share of hardships, and being able to support the community that has a lot of immigrants, families that have had these issues, I think it’s important to have someone who has this cultural lens to be able to do the work.
I love to have an open mind and support community and have a cultural competency to see the good in situations, even in challenging times. I’m very optimistic about the human spirit. Especially children that are in harmful situations.
NBL: How has being a mom shaped you?
IB: It has shaped me immensely. I think that my child is one of my greatest teachers. He always pushes me to evaluate how I can become a better human being. How I can act in this world to leave a legacy and a better world for him. So being a mom is always questioning how I can grow to better serve my child and the world that we live in.
NBL: What are the personal rewards from all the different roles in your life?
IB: One is that I’m doing my life’s purpose in alignment with what I came here to do, that’s really important. There’s a lot of people who work and it’s just a job, but for me it’s a life purpose, a calling to create healing spaces for others to restore and that gives me energy and hope.
It gives me resilience to continue to do the work, so I think it’s really satisfying to know that. In community and connection we are slowly but surely restoring each other.
I get just as much as I give because I get to learn amazing stories from people and their resilience. It’s a two-sided experience — I’m giving but I’m also receiving from these situations. That builds a larger community of friends and colleagues, people that are caring and want to create change in this world.
NBL: How do you feel when you walk through the Bay Village neighborhood where you grew up?
IB: It’s nostalgic. To see the beautiful murals that I saw as a little girl very much alive is important. As a young girl in a new country, learning a new language, you sometimes question whether you’re accepted or not. So it’s important to have representation and to have it done through the medium of art is very powerful and beautiful.
So it helps me appreciate those experiences that I had as a young girl growing up in that very diverse Cape Verdean community. It shapes who I am, to walk along those streets and to know that little boys and girls will go on to do amazing things is inspiring.
It came with its challenges and hardships as a young immigrant family, economically and embracing a new culture and not always being able to fit in. But that is not the highlight of the story when I think about my upbringing.
I overcame that by having a sense of pride, community and love within the Cape Verdean community and my own individual outweighed that. And no matter what the outside world says, be proud to be Cape Verdean, be proud of your family and what you stand for. I’m thankful to my family for that. The community always embraced me.
NBL: What’s in your future? And what are you working towards?
IB: I envision Soul Calling retreats to be a regional model for healing-centered community wellness. Partnering with schools, healthcare organizations, nonprofits and businesses to make restoration more accessible.
My hope is that one day, regardless of background or income, everyone has access to spaces where they can rest, connect and heal.
This needs to be a more common process that we incorporate into businesses and schools because as we restore and heal that has a ripple effect for others.
As I mentioned before, there’s an importance to learning about nature, learning about connection with something greater than yourself. So often people are isolated and thinking about yourself rather than the other person. I think we are starting to realize that everyone is interconnected — with the land and nature and other things.
When we begin to have a different relationship with one another that’s when healing can come about and value each other.
Sean McCarthy is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The New Bedford Light.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
