“Can you imagine what you would do if the government said no one was allowed to speak English for the next 100 years and if you did you’d be jailed for 10 years?”

This was the reality Oromo people from the Oromia regional state of Ethiopia lived with until 1991 when the ban on speaking the Oromo language was lifted.

Since then, development of Oromo in written form has been virtually non-existent. Something Toltu Tufa noticed when she begun learning the language herself.  This led to a brilliant idea.

“Afaan Publications started when I thought to myself, ‘I’m trying to learn a language, there’s nothing available- what if I just started doing something?’”

Afaan Publications is an initiative started by Toltu in 2012 to fill that gap. It’s an organization that publishes children’s books entirely in Oromo with plans to expand into gaming, apps and social media publications.

Afaan Publication made history as the first ever publisher of children’s books entirely in Oromo.

Toltu is of both Oromo and Turkish heritage, she was born and raised in Melbourne and starting this initiative has seen her connect with Oromo communities all over the world.

It all begun with an idea and was fuelled by the drive of the Oromo community worldwide who were ready and willing to lend a helping hand.

The Afaan Publication campaign aimed to raise $50,000 but the overwhelming support saw the campaign raise $124,000 through online crowdfunding and community initiatives.

The driving force behind her success was detailed planning and a proactive approach to getting her campaign started.

“It’s about providing people with options of what they can actually do”.

Those who couldn’t help financially were still able to lend a hand.

“It wasn’t just financial help I was after, I was after all sorts of help. People could help via social media online, sharing and liking the pages and they could also offer their professional help, [for example] graphics design for the website”.

Toltu also put together fundraiser packs with video, posters, invoice books and instructions on how to organise a fundraising event for international communities who wanted to help.

“That really encouraged people because they thought ‘I’ve got the idea and she’s got the know-how’ and they just put it together.”

Each of the 21 international communities who contacted her wanting to help created their own fundraiser.

As a token of her appreciation, Toltu visited the cities which raised the most money to launch the books in person.

During the tour she met a man who grew up in Oromia in the 1950s when the language was banned and teachers would wash their mouths out with soap or dirt for speaking Oromo.

He was imprisoned for 10 years for speaking the language as a young man straight out of high school.

“I asked him how he felt about the books and his eyes welled up in tears,

“He said ‘I could just cry. I feel like I’ve been born again. We’ve put up with what we did so we could see something like this.’”

After years of hard work, of living, breathing and sleeping Afaan Publications, Toltu is a living example of the adage, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started”.

“I wrote all my ideas down on paper. Everything that I would require like a big shopping list of who I’d have to talk to, who I’d need to contact, what kind of money I’d need. If I got the money, what I’d do with it. I wrote that plan 4 years ago and put the plan into action in 2013.”