Hi everyone, I am Martina, I am 29 years old and from Bassano del Grappa. Incipit certainly very mundane, but I think those are the three things that I have always found the most summarizing to be able to say who I am.

Over the years I have found myself repeating this phrase so many times that at some point I asked myself a question, “do you really want this to be the information that characterizes you?”

So I started looking for something that was more interesting and at the same time could describe me. I guess I can say, then, that I am a person who enjoys and knows how to have fun; certainly very simple but not trivial; I love to marvel at everything; I think a lot, maybe too much at times; absolutely at the mercy of mood swings and I like to describe myself as “very passionate,” meaning that if I decide to commit to something I really put my heart into it.

I think it is very important, in order to describe who I am, to point out that I knew from a very young age that I was going to work in social work, I didn’t know the form of it however I knew that that would be the field.

Well, I have been working for almost 10 years in a day care center for the elderly; with time and experience I have come to understand it to be a passion, a way of life, which I am very interested in and above all which stimulates me to give my best always.

In the midst of my “working career,” I decided to immerse myself in an adventure that would later become one of the most exhilarating and interesting of my life: enrolling in college.

Filled with fears and doubts, I began this journey that helped me become more aware and confident about everything I was doing, until I was accompanied by the absolute certainty that really that was “what I wanted to do as a gande.”

Having finished my studies, everything seemed ready for a fresh start: fresh out of college and full of drive, it was clear that all that was missing was the perfect job to kick off this new period of life. The fact is that everything I had done, felt, shared, lived up to that point was marked by something. Something that was missing.

It seemed almost like an unexpressed desire, or so hidden that we could not understand it. So I tried to listen to this feeling I was feeling and realized that I had to follow it, or at least try to let it express itself. And so I did.

Not in a short time, and with a lot of fears and uncertainties everything slowly became clearer: I felt a desire to be able to share with other people all the good I had received over the years, a bit like paying back this life that had given me so much. So I took courage and contacted ASCS, and asked for willingness to help me in realizing this desire.

I met people who spoke “the same language as me,” with whom I shared thoughts of service and giving to the other … finally someone who understood what I was feeling and especially who helped me express it.

Thanks to the work we did together, I was able to examine this impetus I felt inside, in all its aspects, positive and otherwise, subjecting it to any doubts or perplexities, so that nothing was left to chance, so that every tiny detail had its place in this preparation.

Then the time came: on November 21, 2023, I had the flight that would take me to Santiago, Chile, where I would operate for six months in a home for migrant women.

The fears were many, the doubts even more, the uncertainties let us not talk about them. What happened, however, left me dumbfounded: from the very first moment everything went smoothly. Clearly, difficulties were not long in coming, but as if by magic there was always a “ready-made” solution. To date this experience is a continuous discovery, every day there is something I can learn, or a new person I can meet.

I cannot yet quantify the good it is doing me, and I may never be able to, but I am fully aware of how much it is filling and enriching me. I meet looks of people who, like me, have left everything to go to a different country, who have to adapt to different customs, who have to start over and reinvent themselves. The only big difference is that this I could choose to do, most of them could not.

Let’s say this thought is kind of the cornerstone of this whole volunteer experience I’m having. It is the engine that drives me to want to get to know the people I meet, each with their own story, and try to intertwine them a little bit with my own.

I am working to strip myself of a whole host of concepts, prejudices, and ideas that our rich society every day forces us to listen to; I am freeing myself from all of this in order to simply welcome. And thanks to this way of thinking I am enjoying life, I am marveling at the power of sharing, I am also allowing myself to be known as I am.

I am having the experience in a home for migrant women. Strong women, who left their families, their affections, their securities, to seek something better, one more chance. And besides the somewhat more practical jobs that fill my days, the thing I most enjoy doing is listening. Listen to why they are here. Listening to their dreams and wishes. Listening to the people who were and what they would like to become.

Simply listen, without necessarily having to answer, because what I have realized in these months is just that: not everything has to have an answer. And so I welcome and cherish.

I will end by relating a reflection I made while living here: I see these women always living with their backpacks on them, they never part with them, initially I found it a very curious, almost sympathetic thing. Then, upon reflection, I realized the value of this gesture, which might go unnoticed, their whole life is encompassed there: a backpack and a suitcase, and these are the 2 things they care about the most ever. Almost as if they already knew that at any moment things could change, and so it is necessary to be ready for whatever may present itself. And to this I want to find a somewhat positive, almost romantic connotation: the fact that I want to come home with this attitude, to always be ready for change to experience it at its best, to always grow and improve.

I don’t want to say that this experience is changing me, I don’t find that fair to Martina who has walked so far to get here. It’s definitely helping me a lot, though, to become aware and know who I am.

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