Emily Parker spoke to Hannah Truscott, the Founder and Executive Director of Love In Other Languages.

Hannah Truscott

Do you look at the problems in the world and feel like your contribution won't make a difference? Do you wish you could do more good, but just don't know how, or where to start? Love In Other Languages is an online magazine with the stated aim of building awareness of not for profit organisations in order to help others to connect with those causes and make a difference. Emily Parker spoke with Hannah Truscott, the founder and Executive Director of Love In Other Languages about why her work is needed and how everyone can make a difference, even by changing what they Tweet about.

Emily: What is Love In Other Languages?

Hannah: It's all about raising awareness of amazing charities and people who are making a difference and how people can get involved in helping these charities. It's a magazine to inspire people to do something because of what they have.

Emily: Where did the name come from?

Hannah: It's a random story, but about five or six years ago I was studying Events and Marketing at a business college back in Brisbane in Australia. We were learning a lot about different magazines, which included you gotta wear this, you gotta be like this and you got to dress like that. I felt that you do not have to do that; that that is not what it's about and so I decided I should start my own magazine. So I had to decide what to call it and I really wanted it to be about love. I was heading to a lecture and setting a reminder on my phone and I set one saying, "Look up love in other languages". And I thought, that's too long to type out, so I wrote, "Look up 'LIOL'. And then later on that afternoon when my reminder went off and I saw 'LIOL' I thought that sounded cool and decided to keep that.

Emily: So what are people likely to find within its pages?

Hannah: At the moment it's not a print magazine, but everything is online through social media and the website. We have had the opportunity to interview amazing authors, actors and a lot of people and a lot of amazing charities. People blog on there too.

Emily: Why do you do what you do?

Hannah: I come from a really small town in Queensland, Australia. I realised that people get stuck in a small town mentality, where they are not really aware of things that are not going on outside their own town, or outside their own world. To me it was a real shock, as I had a family who brought me up being very aware of a lot of things. The fact that people didn't know that human trafficking still exists and that people don't have access to clean drinking water isn't ok. People need to know what's going on and they need to know that they can do something about it. They don't need to always give money, but they can do a lot of things to help and just to think beyond themselves. That was definitely the passion of why I started it.

Emily: Is there a faith aspect to what you do?

Hannah: Absolutely. I love God and I'm a follower of Christ. I have really amazing parents who taught me to have a personal relationship with God. For me I'm trying to interview people who have the same core value as well.

Emily: Do you think we make the best use of social media?

Hannah: No, because we should be using them, but we're not meant to let it use us. So I would find that most of the time, we let it control us too much. Social media has become about making us look good, when we could use social media to expose what's going on out there and that there's people suffering all around the world; yet we're more concerned about what we ate for lunch and putting that up there. I definitely think we should use it less, because the times that we do use it will be more enjoyable. I always like to put up a quote in the morning and then a picture quote in the evening. I've definitely found that using it less has made me appreciate it more.

Emily: Raising awareness is important to you and you have a phrase on your website that says, "The greatest good is what we do for one another". Do you think we see this in society today?

Hannah: I do absolutely love raising awareness; that is super important to me. I'm really passionate about that because when I raise awareness, I believe it will have an effect. But in regards to that quote, I just love that quote. I believe what it says, but I think a lot of times people see the big things people do and think that everyone can't do that, it's too big. I believe that it's never about that; it's about the little things that you can try and do and see where they take you. It could be buying a cup of coffee for a friend who might be a little bit tired; or it might be sponsoring a child; or you could be picking up litter. People just need to take their eyes off the big things in their life, because the small things are as significant as the big things.

Emily: How can people find LIOL?

Hannah: We've got a great website, which I hope is really simple for everyone to use. It's just loveinotherlanguages.com and we're on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. We're super easy to connect with and we love hearing from people and hearing great stories about what people are doing. We always love to chat to new people.

Emily: Hannah before we finish up, what are some of your hopes and dreams for the future?

Hannah: To be honest with you we just want to get more people involved and that's why we love having different bloggers. We've got a variety of people and friends blogging for us and we're always interested in hearing what other people are passionate about. We would love to eventually run some events that raise money for different charities too.

A core value that a couple of our team have is that if one person reads the blog, or one person watches an interview and they get so inspired that they are working for that charity, then they could potentially see the end of human trafficking for example. I'm not under-estimating what the power of a blog can do, or a video. There's a purpose behind each blog we put up and a lot of prayer goes in to that as well. Who knows what could happen from someone reading something. I might never know about that, but that's ok.