Organization helps empower Hub Cape Verdean community

Yawu Miller

Back in January, 1999 when the Boston Police Department decided to crack down on crime in the city’s Cape Verdean Community, they partnered with the then-U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services for a sweep of the community.

They netted 19 suspects, transporting them to a lock-up in New Hampshire where they were supposedly awaiting deportation. Although none were deported — most were citizens and some of the suspects were not Cape Verdeans — the association of Cape Verdeans with crime stuck in the media.

Responding to the sweep and the ensuing media characterizations of the community as crime-infested, Cape Verdean activists established the Cape Verdean Community Task Force and began engaging public officials in negotiations to work collaboratively with the city’s criolo population.

The city now has six Cape Verdean police officers and the lines of communication have remained open. The city also now has Cape Verdean Community UNIDO, as the task force was re-named two years ago. The organization now focuses on organizing and advocating for the community, providing services and educational programs.

“Our central goal is to mobilize the Cape Verdean community around socio-economic development and advocacy,” says Denise Gonsalves, the organization’s executive director. “We’re service providers and organizers.”

Working with two other staff members, three English as a second language teachers and 10 peer leaders and several dozen volunteers, Gonsalves coordinates services aimed at Cape Verdean families ranging from summer jobs to a soccer program for girls.

The organization also coordinates the yearly Cape Verdean Independence celebration, bringing together bands and community groups for the July 4 festival at City Hall Plaza.

The event, which doubles as a fundraiser for UNIDO, also helps the community to raise its profile in the city. Still, despite roots in Boston going back to the 19th century, the city’s Cape Verdean population is largely invisible, according to Gonsalves.

“I went to talk to a group of people in the district attorney’s office working with the Cape Verdean Community,” she said. “I asked them where the Cape Verdean islands are. Only a couple of people got it right.”

Gonsalves, who grew up in a tightly-knit Cape Verdean community in Norwich, Conn., says the Boston community has a solid social infrastructure of businesses and committed community members.

“We have a strong community,” she comments. “People are there for each other.”

The city’s first major Cape Verdean organization was the Cape Verdean Community House, which closed in 1991. For the next nine years, local stores and businesses served as meeting places for many in the community, disseminating information on social gatherings and social service programs.

By the time of the 1999 police sweep, many of the local social service agencies that served the community were overloaded. Although criminal justice advocacy remains on CVC UNIDO’s agenda, the organization also provides homework assistance, adult ESOL classes, college search and application assistance and mentoring programs.

The organization’s approach to its programming is to help foster community empowerment, according to Gonsalves. For instance, the organization’s ESOL classes incorporated community mapping — the practice of identifying where in the community key businesses, public spaces and institutions are.

“Our approach to ESL is about how do you gain power,” said Gonsalves, who teaches a class one night a week. “When we talk about things in our classes, we try to make things real.”

The organization has also published a Cape Verdean business and services directory aimed at helping connect people in the community to services geared toward them.

Among the more innovative programs the organization currently offers is healing circles for families who have lost loved ones to violence, deportation or incarceration. The circles, modeled after a Native American tradition, foster communication between people who are sharing similar experiences.

They also encourage the survivors of violence to identify and serve their own needs.

“Instead of making a program, we let the people determine what the program looks like,” Gonsalves said. “It’s about sharing power and helping people to be active in changing their own communities.”

The group’s work has helped foster even more cohesiveness in a community that was already fairly tightly knit, according to Gonsalves. A recent election for UNIDO’s board made that clear.

“We had more people running for the seats than we had seats,” Gonsalves said. “The good thing is that the people who didn’t get elected are still involved.”