MARIETTA — The Little Brazil Foundation was announced Saturday at a ceremony that doubled as a town hall meeting hosted by Commissioner Jerica Richardson.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, as of 2022, there were 17,117 Georgia residents who were born in Brazil.
The foundation is intended to serve as a support group for the large Brazilian population in and around the Terrell Mill, Powers Ferry, and Delk Road areas.
“One of the things we wanted to do was make sure that the community had different pieces in place so they could more directly share about the needs and advocate for their needs,” Richardson said. “The foundation was one of those ideas to pull that together. The community did just that, they pulled together (for) the Little Brazil Foundation, to try to formalize their internal relationships so they could then be formalized with some of the organizations within the county.”
Richardson said the foundation will now work to build relationships with organizations like the Cobb Chamber of Commerce to produce programs similar to other nonprofits.
Many businesses in the area cater to the Brazilian population, including Sabor Do Brasil, Enjoy Brazilian Cuisine, Brazilian Bakery Cafe, Do Coisas Brazil, Brazil Market and Butcher Shop, Unicco Supermarket, and Brazilian Wax by Andreia.
Dani Sousa, director of the Little Brazil Foundation, said the meeting Saturday allows them to help the Brazilian community establish businesses and provide them with support.
“The next step, we’re going to get together and put everything we talked about in paper to make sure we know what the community needs,” Sousa said. “How can we help the community? We’re trying to find out what we can do and talk about it and go from there.”
Sousa was one of three members of the Little Brazil Foundation committee announced at Saturday’s ceremony, along with Dilla Campos, who Sousa said was the “main brain” of Little Brazil, Juliana Borges, serving as secretary and Napoleon Pinto, finance director.
During the town hall portion of the meeting, Richardson said through translator Pinto to the mostly Portuguese-speaking attendees that the goal from the county’s end is to work with the city of Marietta to develop a community center to highlight the culture of the Brazilian community. That community center, she said, will need state and federal funds.
“The county has been hard at work looking for the right location for this,” Richardson said. “We have partners in the state Legislature who have a willingness to help us secure special funds.”
She said the community center would serve as a “really strong anchor” for the community. That community center would include meeting spaces, a library, a community room and a gym, she said.
Improvements are already coming to the area, Richardson said, in the form of lighting, sidewalk improvements, crosswalk improvements and improved bus stops.
“These are improvements that are coming and these are projects that are underway,” Richardson said.
Richardson called those improvements “serious high priorities,” citing insufficient lighting on the Windy Hill Connector as an example.
Richardson said $50,000 has been assigned to a fund that would allow the Little Brazil area to generate a brand that would make the area feel like home for the Brazilian population.
That Brazilian population converged on the Powers Ferry, Terrell Mill and Delk Road areas because it was cost-effective, Sousa said.
“It wasn’t anything planned,” she said. “I think that’s the reason most of the people decided to live here. It was cheap to live in that area, and everything’s close.”
Former Cobb Commissioner Bob Ott, who used to represent the area, previously told the MDJ Brazilians began moving to the area in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
“I think the economy of where you could open a business or a restaurant was ripe for a Brazilian bakery or a Brazilian restaurant to establish itself in the area, and it was kind of at a good cross roads,” Ott said.
Ott said area churches such as John Knox Presbyterian on Powers Ferry Road and Holy Family Catholic Church on Lower Roswell Road started holding services in Portuguese.
“And so I think you get a few businesses or restaurants and church services and people started feeling comfortable with being in an area, and as the area changed and grew more opportunities presented themselves, more people moved in,” he said.
