Our Year in Review: The Smile Project in 2025

Y’all know New Year’s Eve is my favorite. I’m dangerously sentimental and chronically inspired. With each growing year, I find myself wrapped in gratitude for the moments of pause and reflection that come before the confetti, before the calendar flip, before your phone dings an absurd amount of times at an even more absurd hour with well wishes… with hope… with promises of what could be.

This was a big year for The Smile Project—we turned 15! And while I invite you to read the full reflection on what 14 full years of a thing means to me, I mostly want to take this moment to thank everyone who has been there for me and for this organization—whether you joined our community 14 days ago or 14 years ago. 

For those unfamiliar with our origin story—hi, I’m Elizabeth! I started The Smile Project in 2011 when I was 17-years-old. I was driving home from high school, down those same country backroads I’d written on my entire life. It was unseasonably warm for November 9 in Western Pennsylvania so I had my windows down and my radio up. And I can tell you the exact turn on P. Road where I had a crystal clear thought—“Day 1: Happiness is.. those perfect car rides where the radio just plays all the right songs.”

Try as I might throughout the years, I’ve never been able to recall a single song from that drive. But I remember the feeling. I remember the joy. And like any 17-year-old in 2011 who thinks they have a world-changing idea, I went home and posted that on Facebook. And I never stopped posting. This year, on July 17th, I posted my 5,000th consecutive day of Happiness.

Realizing I could turn my own happy moment into something more was the catalyst for The Smile Project. Turning it into that something has sincerely been the privilege of a lifetime. Here’s what that looks like.

We run a program called SPARK which stands for Strengthening Positivity and Reinforcing Kindness. SPARK Clubs can be started by anyone (usually high school and college students) who want to make their world a kinder place. This year, SPARK at Slippery Rock University and SPARK at Westminster College both celebrated 10 years of activity. That’s ten years of students gathering to improve their schools, to talk about mental health, to serve their communities, to lead with love. These groups are living proof that when young people are told that they can make a difference, that someone believes in them, that they matter, incredible things happen. Thank you to every SPARK member past and present for making our future brighter.

At some point, my social media posts became a shared language for my community of loved ones. “Happiness is this.” “Happiness is that.” What you look for is what you see and suddenly we were seeing joy everywhere. A few years back we formally launched our Ambassador Program, encouraging people to record their own Happiness—whether publicly or privately in a notebook on their nightstand. (There is no right way to seek joy.) We were thrilled to welcome more Ambassadors into the fold this year. Your heart is contagious. 

As mentioned, a sucker for celebration, I’ve been using my birthday for good for decades. We formalized this into the #BirthdayGiveback program—an initiative designed to teach and encourage others to turn a day about them into a day of service. This year, my birthday overlapped with a work trip for my fulltime job and, feeling deep appreciation for my colleagues, I dedicated the Birthday Giveback to them, encouraging our community to show up for the people they work with. As always, it was a joy to watch this play out on social media as people around the world showed up for the people they spend the most time with. How did I share kindness with my team? Cookies and handwritten notes, of course!

The last couple years, I’ve found a lot of adventure through the cadence of a monthly challenge. In 2024, I took classes to hurdle out of my comfort zone and learn things new to me. In 2025, I sat closer to home, creating the Bake Around the World; Write in the Kitchen series. Each month, I researched and baked a vegan version of a traditional dessert from a randomly selected country. I also sat and wrote (okay, usually at a coffee shop) something non-work, non-Smile related. The feeling of coming back to oneself is a peace I wish on everyone. Read about the challenge or a specific location—Gabon, Grenada, Colombia, Nigeria, Albania, China, Yemen, Palau, Ireland, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Bosnia & Herzegovina. (Or, if you’re just really into sweets, click here to see all the bakes in one collage.)

Something I was wholly unprepared for this year was something that started as a joke. On January 1, I created a spreadsheet called “Cr-iary.” I was going to record every time I cried in 2025. It started as a bit, occasionally felt like a chore, but ultimately left me with a really fascinating exploration of emotion and self. I remain completely floored and humbled by the response as people chatted to me for days after about their own feelings of emotion, their own experiences with tears. For those who want to start their own Cr-iary, as promised, here’s the template I made for myself with a real entry for an example. Duplicate it and see how recording emotions colors your year.

Both the Cr-iary review and the baking series were documented on the blog, a blog that saw 104 posts this year. Seven of those posts were #ServiceSpotlights, using our platform to lift others who are making positive changes in their communities. But most of the blog? Most of the blog was my ramblings. Writing about finding the light in the dark… writing about the impact of intentional kindness… writing about our connection to one another and to the world around us… about the way we see ourselves… about the way we change as we move through life. Thank you to everyone who reads, comments, and shares. It means more than I could ever say.

One of my favorite moments of the year was giving a talk to 100 high school seniors in Pennsylvania. Each year, I return to my roots and spend a week counseling young people about an hour from where I grew up and each year they keep giving me the microphone to talk about this Facebook status turned movement for joy turned nonprofit organization. There is nothing that makes me feel more optimistic about the future than sitting in a room with young people who are excited and eager to leave the world better than they found it. Young people who sound a lot like me at 17. 

I’ve been putting off this blog for a while. Year end reviews are always hard to write—made harder by the fact that earlier this year I put a pause on our monthly newsletter. Really, what did happen this year? Did I even do anything? 

It only took a scroll through my notes, through our social media, through the 142-page single spaced blog document that I’m currently typing in to be reminded that the simple actions we take every day only aggregate over time into an avalanche of impact. 

Thank you for being here. For encouraging simple acts of kindness. For encouraging me without realizing it. For looking out for the people in your corner of the world. For looking out for people in corners of the world thousands of miles from your own. For showing up for each other. For showing up for yourself. 

365 days of joy in 2025… a drop in the bucket of the over 5,100 I’ve written in my lifetime. But it started with 1. 

As we turn the calendar to 2026, we invite you to start your own joy journey. We invite you to see what happens when you bet on yourself one day at a time. 

Here’s to creativity and courage. Community and kindness. Compassion and joy. And choosing to find Happiness again and again and again.