Christmas Card from Jaume Sanllorente

Dear friends,

We look forward to 2026 with excitement for the arrival of the new year, bidding farewell to the year that is ending. This year, 2025, has not been just any year for our organisation: we have reached our 20th anniversary.

During these two decades of work in India and other Asian countries, we have learned a lot (may we never stop learning!). We have seen progress and setbacks, moments of enormous hope and others of profound difficulty. But if there is one thing we have always tried to nurture, it is that childlike gaze: the ability to marvel at every small achievement, to be outraged by injustice, to believe — against all odds — that change is possible.

Growing up means knowing who we are and why we are here. And as we close this symbolic year, I feel that our greatest strength is having come this far without forgetting our initial impulse: the conviction that every child, every person we work with and for, deserves a dignified future, and that solidarity can transcend borders, cultures and languages.

None of this would have been possible without you. Without those of you who collaborate, support, spread the word, trust and sustain this cause with your time, your commitment and your generosity. This organisation is, above all, a community united by shared values.

I would not want to end this letter without mentioning the conflicts, violence and divisions that the year that is ending has brought. I deeply hope that 2026 will also be a year of greater peace, a peace that is not only the absence of war, but the presence of justice, dialogue and respect. A peace that starts small and reaches those who need it most.

On behalf of everyone at Mumbai Smiles, I wish you a happy 2026 with all my heart. May the new year find us with the maturity that comes with age, but also with the undiminished enthusiasm of those who continue to believe, as they did when it all began, that the world can be a fairer place if we never stop trying.

Jaume Sanllorente