Emmanuel Musoni is the chair of Great Lakes Agency for Peace and Development International (GLAPDI), a community organisation founded in 2012 in Sydney. Emmanuel has been engaged in community development for many years both in Australia and overseas.
Emmanuel was raised in a refugee camp in Uganda until he was 16 years. This has led him to be strongly committed and passionate about advocating for better settlement and integration of refugees and migrants who are yearning to call rural and regional Australia home.
As a result of having more than 200 families expressing interest in moving to Country towns, Emmanuel began a campaign of visiting rural communities to talk about the benefits of regional resettlement for communities and refugees. Since 2016 he has visited more than 35 regional communities (some multiple times) in Qld NSW, Vic and WA. To date, Emmanuel has settled around 127 people in regional areas since mid-2016.
At the same time, he is championing conversations with communities in regional areas on the strategies of welcoming and retaining migrants in the community and guiding research efforts in this field. With the support of Scanlon Foundation and Regional Australia Institute, Emmanuel completed the development of a community based national toolkit “STEPS TO SETTLEMENT SUCCESS” which will guide the next generation of Regional migration.
Emmanuel’s work has enlightened and changed perceptions towards refugees within the Australian population and brought new debate into State and Federal politics
