The Martha’s Vineyard Center for Living is holding its second in a series of cultural luncheons for 2012 on Saturday, March 3, from noon to 2 p.m., at the Grill on Main in Edgartown. The luncheon will honor our Island Brazilian community. The program speaker is Valci Carvalho. Mr. Carvalho, pastor of the Alliance Community Church, has lived on the Vineyard for 11 years and has a lot of good insight into human behavior and a great sense of humor. He will offer a close look at the contributions and influences of the Brazilian community to the Island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Several major employers of Brazilian labor on the Vineyard spoke out this week against a newly-established Island blog which has accused them of hiring undocumented workers. The inflammatory blog has caused distress and anger among the Brazilian community as well as their employers.

Posts on the blog accuse entities as diverse as landscape companies, restaurants, retailers, even the YMCA and the Martha’s Vineyard Commission of illegal hiring and sometimes corruption.

In every community there are people who have different experiences, who are unique and yet similar. We live side by side with each other, but how much do we know about our neighbors? Most of the people I spoke to for this piece are well known to me, and yet I did not know their stories. We all have a story, sometimes known only to ourselves.

Entrepreneurship is in Elio Silva’s genes. Growing up in the landlocked, coffee-rich state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, he worked beside his father as he grew a small grocery into a major supermarket. In his 22 years on the Vineyard Mr. Silva has imported the lessons and work ethic ingrained in him during that time to the two stores he runs on State Road in Vineyard Haven: Tisbury Farm Market and Vineyard Grocer. He has also imported some delicious Brazilian coffee. Last week the Martha’s Vineyard Commission approved Mr.

A year ago, a group of students of Brazilian ethnicity decided that they wanted to educate the school about Brazilian culture. Through hard work, charm and community support they created the first-ever Brazilian awareness day at the regional high school.

Can you guess the two biggest countries in the Western Hemisphere that were born around the same time, colonized by Europeans, share a history of slavery and indigenous people, and are both democracies? Here’s a hint: the largest community abroad of one of these countries lives here in New England.

Brazil and the United States may have more in common than you thought.

The mood was buoyant Wednesday night, as a small group of high school students gathered with friends to share a meal and conversation. Handshakes and hugs passed as greetings at the door, and when everyone had settled, one student pulled a long piece of cloth from her belongings.

In a last-minute reversal of principal Stephen Nixon’s recent decision regarding appropriate graduation wear, the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School district committee voted last night to allow seniors, Brazilian and otherwise, to wear personalized scarves over their graduation gowns.

The vote followed an impassioned speech from former high school student and recent Emory University graduate Alex Parker.

Lyndon Johnson Pereira is all but forgotten. Just a handful of the Island’s some 3,000 Brazilian residents have heard of him. Other pioneering Brazilians who came in the late 1980s and early 1990s are now Island personalities, including Elio Silva, owner of the Tisbury Farm Market and other stores, and Paco Santana, a painter.