About Us
The Village Revival Project is based in Newark, New Jersey and powered by a dynamic group of servant leaders who support impact work on the local and national level.
Our team members have diverse backgrounds ranging from nonprofit development to clinical modalities to policy, academia and organizing.
Collectively, we have over 160 years experience working with both community members directly and within organizations that are driving a positive change at large.
Meet the Team
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ALIA BERRY, MSW, LSW
FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Community-based Social Worker & Principal Consultant of Seeds and Berries
A licensed clinician who has been serving ages 0 to 75 in a variety of settings from schools to shelters to correctional facilities for over 20 years. Her experience is diverse as she creates safe, vulnerable, restorative spaces for communities to thrive but also provides national level training and capacity building; with a special emphasis on supporting frontline staff wellness. Alia’s focus is serving individuals before, during and after incarceration using a trauma-informed, healing centered approach from the sidewalk to the courtroom and from corrections to reentry.
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Darrell Price
BOARD DIRECTOR
Program Director at LEAD Charter School, Newark Opportunity Youth Network
A former New Jersey Juvenile Justice Commision (JJC) Director who possesses over twenty (20) years of youth development programming experience. During his tenure with YouthBuild Newark, he has served as Program Manager, Director of Re-Entry and Director of Climate and Culture. He served as the Director of Student Supports at LEAD Charter School as the co-lead with the Head of School upon its opening. Darrell earned his Bachelor's Degree from Purdue University majoring in Organizational Psychology and his Masters from Rutgers University in Public Administration.
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Jordan Costa
BOARD TREASURER
Senior Project Manager at Giffords’ Center for Violence Intervention
Currently serves at Giffords’ Center for Violence Intervention, a national organization that seeks to uplift community-led strategies to reduce violence, identify best practices, and advocate for sustainable funding at various governmental levels. Jordan serves as a doctoral fellow at New Jersey’s Center on Gun Violence Research where she investigates system-level violence, community trauma, and the well-being of community violence intervention workers. Having experienced the personal loss of a parent to gun violence, Jordan is committed to strengthening safety and support structures. She is presently completing her PhD at Rutgers University, Newark.
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Saywonza Cuevas, LCSW
BOARD SECRETARY
Clinical Social Worker at the Department of Veteran Affairs
Provides individual/group counseling, case management, and referrals/linkages while serving on internal committees to represent the interests of the dyads she serves across local, state, and federal agencies. Saywonza also serves as a Lecturer for Rutgers School of Social Work, teaching first year BSW and MSW students. Saywonza also has provided individual and group counseling within homeless shelters, substance abuse outpatient clinics, and correctional facilities. Saywonza earned her MSW through Rutgers School of Social Work. She is a proud wife and sports mom to four beautiful children.
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Amina Bey
BOARD MEMBER
Executive Director of Newark Emergency Services for Families
Local expert in Workforce Development, Human Services specializing in Nonprofit Management and Community Impact Work. Before working with the City of Newark (Newark Workforce Development Board, NewarkWORKS and Shani Baraka Women’s Resource Center), Amina facilitated operations at the Essex County Division of Training and Employment for 15 years. Amina is a consultant, public speaker, facilitator and Adjunct Professor. She serves on many boards and committees as a thought leader, visionary, and public servant. Amina is also a member of the North Jersey Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.
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Mark Comesañas
BOARD MEMBER
Executive Director of My Brother’s Keeper Newark
As a lifelong Newarker, Mark worked as a middle and high school teacher and educational leader within Newark Public Schools for 13 years, including as the founding principal of UPLIFT Academy. Following this role, Mark served as the Head of Schools and a founding board member of LEAD Charter School, the first and only alternative education charter district in New Jersey. Mark holds a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership from Montclair State University and is currently working towards a Doctoral degree in Educational Leadership at the University of Pennsylvania.
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Grassroots Capacity Builder
Equal Justice USA is a national organization that works to transform the justice system by promoting responses to violence that break cycles of trauma. They work at the intersection of criminal justice, public health, and racial justice to elevate healing over retribution, meet the needs of survivors, advance racial equity, and build community safety.
Nonprofit Coaching Consultant
As Founder of Elevate Newark, Dr. Jacqueleen Bido, a national nonprofit coaching consultant, empowers and helps people, their organizations, and the communities they serve to invoke social change. She continues to expand her mission through business consultation, program development, and grant writing to support local and national initiatives.
Beneath every behavior there is a feeling.
And beneath every feeling there is a need.
And when we meet that need rather than focus on the behavior, we begin to deal with the cause, not the symptom.
“at its core, we are not only inviting the community to talk about healing but daring us to heal...Together. The Village Revival Project seeks to heal the people through the people.”
- Saywonza Cuevas LCSW, Board Secretary
Many years ago in Newark, New Jersey, I was in a community meeting where the topic was who should be called to clean up brain matter on the sidewalk.
As a licensed community-based clinician and community member, I was so disturbed by this horrific conversation that I immediately brought the issue to a therapeutic group I was facilitating that night with community members who have caused violence themselves in ways that have also left such aftermath on the sidewalk.
The dialogue started with accountability, as I passionately elevated the voices from the earlier meeting, to help them understand the traumatized sentiment of all those who had no choice but to walk past such a gruesome scene the morning after. While this group was not responsible for today’s issue, they admitted that often their violent decision making process did not consider this unintended consequence. It was as they realized how this aftermath of violence impacted their fellow community members, that they began to empathize with them as “indirect” victims who were caught up in the ripple effect of violence.
While the conversation started with a tone of accountability and fostering empathy for the impacted community, the dialogue then shifted to processing the first time they saw such evidence on the sidewalk when they were young children. After seeing this, in neighborhoods plagued by community violence, they began to struggle with feelings of powerlessness and fear regarding their own mortality. It was then that they began leaning into harm-related lifestyles under the belief system that this way of life would keep them safe.
While trauma informed, healing-centered work commenced with this group, their surrounding community was not present to hear their perspectives.
And they rarely are.
So in order to help close the gap of (mis)understanding, I brought this experience back out to the community, through social platforms, to explain the idea that “indirect victims” are found on both sides of harm. This was not to make excuses for those who caused the harm but to build empathy and social awareness around how the trauma that harm-doers have experienced themselves often manifests into violence that in turn traumatizes the community — a devastating cycle.
I have been playing this middleman role for over 20 years.
It has been clear to me for quite some time that we urgently must revive the collective heartbeat of the village; we are not breathing together as one.
After a decade of using art-based healing modalities and in an effort to remove myself as the middleman, I began to envision a safe space for these two groups to truly see, hear and feel each other directly.
And so…
The Village Revival Project was born.