Martina
Love for others and love for food
“Leave the place you live in better condition than you found it, be of use and invest your time in improving the lives of those who need it the most. This has always been the inspiration that propelled my every action, and which led me to work on charitable and social projects since I was a teen. I always thought I was very lucky to have been born in a wealthy part of the world, in a well-off and healthy family, and somehow I always wished I could give back all the positive things that I had been gifted in life.
I have always participated as a volunteer in charities and fund-raising. I was just out of school when I started working for a children's home as a teacher (even before I was certified). By working in not-for-profit organisations, I was studying at the school of life, and I learned so much about the realities of local life.
My desire to find concrete options to improve the quality of life for those kids who haven’t had a leg up in life was not met with the same enthusiasm by the facility where I was working. So ,I decided to move abroad, acquire new skills, with the idea of coming back to Italy in the future with projects, actual solutions and a personal development, which would have allowed me to make a real difference.
First, I moved to New York, then to Maine and finally to Washington DC, where I started working at the National Children’s Center. I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the residential realities of the suburbs in DC, Maryland and Virginia, and also to participate in the policy making and the institutions in DC.
While focused on my education and work, Christian and I were in a long-distance relationship between Italy and the US. I knew he would never have moved to Washington. The environment and lifestyle were not for him. After he graduated, he would move to Toronto, Canada, to be closer to me and that’s what he did. Finally, we were in the same time zone. Finally, we could talk to each other whenever we felt like it!
While he was fitting in perfectly in Toronto, I was starting to wonder what I was building, what I had achieved. But the more I looked around me and at the people around me, the more I came to understand it wasn’t the right place for me. I loved my job, but it could not be my whole life. I wanted a life with Christian, the only safe place in my life. I started to reassess everything. Leaving DC would mean cutting off my work relationships and interests, but staying would have left me feeling trapped at some point, and I would have probably lost Christian, too. So I instinctively decided to pack my bags, take a bus and ride from Washington to Toronto. I had chosen my life, putting myself and us first.
I never regretted my choice. We immediately created our space and our life in Toronto and just like that our family was growing with the arrival of Nicole. We never lost the will to build something that was our own, something with our footprint on. We found the opportunity to leave our mark during our trip to Italy, when our families floated the idea of starting a restaurant. We fell in love with an old ruin and jumped at the chance of making our dream come true, our restaurant, our Cichi’s Ristobistrot. It would have been the culmination of our experiences and reflect our path that led us to who we have become.”
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