Our Village Keepers

Soraya is a visionary leader, birthkeeper, and maternal health advocate whose life and work are the living expression of her maternal lineage’s dream. Through her, the prayers of grandmothers and generations past rise into form. This sacred calling is not just a profession, it is her spiritual charter. A covenant made with her ancestors to restore what was interrupted, and to reclaim birth as a divine, sovereign act.

She is her sister’s keeper, her mother’s baby, and her grandmother’s pride and joy, a village child raised in Txada Igreja, Picos, Cabo Verde, where community care and ancestral wisdom were not concepts, but ways of life. Now rooted in New Bedford, she carries the essence of Cabo Verde and the pulse of her people in all that she does.

As the Founder & CEO of Sacred Birthing Village (SBV), Soraya leads a transformative movement to restore ancestral birthing knowledge across the Black Diaspora and the African Continent. Through SBV, she is building a maternal restorative village sanctuary, a sanctuary where birthing people and families are witnessed, honored, and empowered through the full arc of the childbearing continuum.

With over nineteen years of experience in human servitude, Soraya has served as a birthkeeper, holistic birth consultant, mental health clinician, and lifelong advocate for maternal and reproductive justice. Her care is deeply spiritual, culturally rooted, and grounded in the knowing that birth is a portal, not a procedure.

Through her practice, the Maternal Nurturing Collective, she offers full-spectrum support from conception to postpartum. Her offerings include healing circles, ancestral consultations, and ceremonies that guide women, families, and communities through the sacred rebirth that childbirth invites.

Formally trained in mental health counseling, perinatal mental health, postpartum care, and holistic midwifery, Soraya is currently deepening her studies with the Matrona Holistic Midwifery Program. Her work integrates quantum midwifery, ancestral medicine, and wise woman traditions to ensure every birthing person is deeply supported, honored, and held.

Her impact reaches far beyond the birth room. Soraya is a respected facilitator, speaker, and movement builder. She serves on the Massachusetts Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, Greater Boston Birth Equity Coalition and formerly served on the Racial Inequities in Maternal Health Special Commission under Governor Baker, helping to shape statewide advocacy and policy grounded in liberation, autonomy, and justice.

At the heart of it all, Soraya is a mother of two powerful soul-liberators and teachers, whose lives illuminate her path and remind her daily that resistance, healing, and joy are intertwined.

Fluent in Cape Verdean Creole, Spanish, and Portuguese, she creates spaces that are radically inclusive, culturally congruent, and deeply honoring of all people.

A revolutionary force in the birth justice movement, Soraya is fiercely committed to building the village, restoring ancestral pathways, and holding sacred space for others to step fully into their divine power just as the village once did and continues for her. And just as her ancestors dreamed she would.

As the Sister’s Keeper of Collective Care at Sacred Birthing Village, Vanila Silva is the living thread that holds the Web of Care together. She is the steady drumbeat of our village grounding, harmonizing, and activating the sacred rhythm of collective care that SBV is restoring.

Vanila carries the evolution of our model with deep integrity. She is the embodiment of our shift away from service-delivery and into ancestral, community-rooted practice. Through her hands and heart, the Web of Care becomes more than a concept, it becomes a lived, daily experience for our families, SisterFriends, and the wider village.

She is strategist, organizer, and soul-tender all at once.
She ensures that every sister who enters the village is welcomed with reverence, mapped into community, and held inside a network of natural and formal supports, not dependency, but empowerment.

She:

• activates and oversees the Web of Care pathway

• orients referrers and natural supporters into the sacred responsibility of village practice

• guides SisterFriends with wisdom, bravery, and compassionate accountability

• holds Little Sisters with presence, clarity, and unwavering respect

• tends the internal flow of communication, rituals, and shared practices

• ensures SBV’s care is not only responsive, but ancestrally aligned and liberatory

• keeps the village moving in right relationship, pace, and purpose

Her leadership is both practical and spiritual.
She protects the integrity of the work while nurturing the nervous system of the village.

In everything she does, Vanila models what it means to lead from wholeness, to listen with the heart, and to build systems rooted in reciprocity rather than extraction.

Through her weaving of relationships, rituals, roles, and rhythms the Sacred Web of Care strengthens. Families are resourced, wisdom rises from within the community, and SBV continues to grow as a sanctuary where every life, every story, and every becoming is held with dignity and devotion.

Vanila reminds us daily:
Liberation is built through people, presence, and practice one activated relationship at a time.

At Sacred Birthing Village, this role is a sacred assignment, not a program position, but a community-rooted calling.
You help weave our Web of Care by walking alongside families, supporting SisterFriends, and coordinating Village Tenders as we restore ancestral, communal, and liberatory practices of care.

What You’ll Hold

• Build trusting relationships with Little Sisters and their natural supports

• Guide families through our Web of Care mapping & activation

• Support ceremonies, circles, and monthly communal gatherings

• Recruit, orient, and nurture Village Tenders (our volunteer careforce)

• Connect families to culturally aligned resources

• Help us tell our story through community insights & reflection

• Strengthen partnerships across the South Coast and diaspora

Who You Are

A community-rooted care worker with love for Black, Brown, and Indigenous families,
grounded in cultural wisdom, integrity, and liberation-centered values.

This is not a program position, it is a role in restoring the Village.

If you feel called to this work, we’d love to connect.

Learn more or apply:
maternalrestoration@sbvsouthcoast.org