Leaving home is never easy. When that journey means saying goodbye to your "terra madre" — or loosely translated, motherland — crossing the Atlantic and settling into an area that is just as foreign to you as the language, “difficult” doesn't even begin to cover it.

Take it from Vita Maria Mesnick. With her Italian heritage and love of teaching perpetually on her mind, Mesnick longed to keep her culture alive in her newly adopted country and began brainstorming a new project to unite her passions. “I have been dreaming of a school where we can teach Italian,” she said.