Jayden Battey studied economics at Deakin University because he wanted to better understand the systems powering our world. But the most valuable lesson he learnt was how to challenge his own thinking.
Most people breathe a sigh of relief when they leave their share house days behind. But not Jayden Battey (BCom ‘22) and his wife Mikyla, who in their early 20s moved in with 28 men at risk of homelessness.
We caught up with Jayden for Deakin’s latest Stories of Wonder podcast to find out why, and how the experience has changed him.
Content warning: this story contains discussion of homelessness. For support, visit deakin.edu.au/24hoursupport.
‘We live in a fast-paced, very connected world. But a shadow side of that is: every step the world takes to be more connected, there are cohorts of people who are a step further disconnected,’ says Jayden.
‘That just feels like the biggest injustice to me: that people feel ignored, that people feel excluded, that people are shut out by the world around them.’
Challenging the meaning of community
Servants Community Housing houses people on low incomes. Jayden and Mikyla live alongside the residents as live-in house managers.
People living in these homes have often led challenging lives. They’ve been imprisoned, or they’ve fled family violence. They might have psychiatric conditions or other disability.
But often it’s people’s perception of them that stops them from engaging with the world fully. When given the chance, residents love connecting with the community around them.
‘Pretty immediately, that experience of living alongside these residents started to challenge some of the ideas we’d had around what community or connection really means,’ Jayden says.
He had previously thought that building community was about connecting with as many people as possible, as broadly as possible. But his new living situation showed Jayden that’s only one way to connect with people.
‘I think it just granted a different appreciation for the importance of the non-remarkable everyday moments that matter when you spend time together,’ he says.
Amplifying disadvantaged voices
Love in the Walls documents the stories of people who live in Servants Community Housing. The documentary won Best Melbourne Documentary and Best Emerging Director at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival in 2025.
Director and cinematographer Samuel Kostevc spent six months with residents before bringing his camera in.
Love in the Walls has no neat storyline transforming challenges into triumphs. Instead, the documentary invites people hurrying between items on their checklist into the lives of fellow humans who coexist in the same physical spaces but in very different circumstances.
‘What I really love about the film is that there’s no voiceover – there’s no narrator tying it all together,’ Jayden says. ‘You just get to experience a moment with them and hear their story in the way that they would like to share it.
‘The documentary asks: how can we understand the complexity of their experience without presuming what a solution must be for them?’
He attributes its title to the CEO of Servants Community Housing, Amanda Donohoe.
‘People have tried to quantify and explain why this model of housing is so successful for this cohort of people who really struggle to maintain tenancies in so many other types of environments,’ Jayden says.
‘And Amanda said: “Well, in some ways, we know the answer. We have data. But at the end of the day, there’s also this very human thing, which is love. It’s like there’s love in the walls.”’
The most important skill universities teach
Jayden, a 2025 Deakin University Alumni Award recipient, has long been curious about people and the economic systems that underpin our modern lives.
‘As much as they’re broken, in a sense, those systems also lead to economic dignity and a high quality of life for most people on the planet,’ he says.
He completed a Bachelor of Commerce online at Deakin while working full-time.
‘The cloud model worked well. Even if we hadn’t been in COVID-19 lockdowns at the time, I wouldn’t have needed to leave work in order to get to a lecture at a certain time. I could engage online afterwards and structure my week in the way that I needed to,’ he says.
He had assumed that studying online would be lonely.
‘It’s easier to make friends online than you might think,’ he says.
‘We had a study group of a few people that formed from a couple of different classes. We would Zoom in to hang out and study and play games and muck around.’
Jayden decided to study economics because he wanted to be more informed about topics he cared about. But the most impactful skill he gained from his Deakin degree was how to be an effective learner.
The world around us is constantly changing. Some information might go out of date, but the ability to absorb and integrate new information into our thinking never does.
Being an advocate is living your values
The ability to rethink our opinions is something we need to use more, Jayden says. He finds the echo chambers many of us build – whether intentionally or algorithmically – troublesome.
‘Find people who are different than you and disagree with you and understand them and where they’re coming from instead of pushing them down for disagreeing,’ he says.
‘Any place where you go into the contest of ideas and can listen well and challenge what you believe and why you believe it is good. And I think university is a great place to do that. I think Deakin is a good place to do that.’
But expanding your worldview is only the first step to becoming an advocate, Jayden says. The next step is to live by your values.
‘When we live in a way where the values in our lived experience in our public life don’t align well with the values in our inner life, I think we feel tension. And I think that’s where we feel anxiousness and stress and overwhelm,’ Jayden says.
Most of us want to make a difference in the world. Living generously, being kind and showing up for people can align us more with what we value.
‘We can advocate from a place of fear or we can advocate from a sense of anger,’ Jayden says.
‘Neither is necessarily inherently bad, but I think if we want to bring people on the journey, then we need to have a genuine love for one another. So yeah, love people.’
Want to know more about Jayden’s story? Watch the full Stories of Wonder interview on YouTube, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.