In the project selected by Fondazione Edoardo Garrone, she had described ‘the dream of Magia’, her mare: a bit of land to share with children through the Cavalgiocare method and the Luna e Stelle b&b becoming a meeting place and cultural centre

Martina Romualdi

Sid il Biondo (Sid-the-Fair-Haired) – a powerful, adult horse – is trotting inside the fence. Viola, an almost seven-year-old girl, is sitting on his back. Martina helps her turn around, very slowly. Then, she invites her to lie down, hug the horse’s rump and gently stroke him, bonding with him.

In Premilcuore (Forlì-Cesena), in the Romagna Apennines, Martina Romualdi has found a way to combine her great passion for horse riding with teaching to young children through a non-competitive approach. What she does here is “teach the fascination of horses through play and movement”: Martina is an operator at Cavalgiocare, an association based in Sovicille, in the Siena area, that has developed a method based on a number of principles: one is the need to ensure a serene and respectful relationship between and among human beings and between humans and horses; another is using a teaching and training system based on learning through games that help develop mental, emotional and physical abilities in children, adults, and horses, while always ensuring animal welfare.

“I have been a horse-riding teacher since I was 19. One year later, aged 20, I discovered the Cavalgiocare method, aimed at introducing children to the world of horses” says Martina. When she was 5 years old, Martina started to learn horse riding, a passion she developed thanks to her neighbour, a coachman. A man – she explains – “who went into the forest to fetch wood with his caravan and kept horses and mules in a meadow behind his place. When I saw him come back from the forest, I always climbed onto the packsaddle of these big, docile animals carrying the wood”. Later on, her passion was encouraged by her mother: “For my eighteenth birthday, my mother gave me a horse as a present: we had just moved into this farmhouse and that gift changed my life”, recalls Martina.