“You can find great content almost anywhere – but spending quality time in a room with hundreds of emerging leaders from all across the globe? That’s rare, and the AFS Youth Assembly’s best gift.”
Jayden Battey is a live-in house manager and communications manager for Servants Community Housing. Living alongside 28 adult men with experiences of acute psychiatric illness, disability, incarceration, homelessness and trauma, Jayden has a deep passion for understanding how relationships between diverse people can unlock new learnings, empathy, agency and personal transformation.
His desire to better understand the potential for good community engagement practice to address public health issues is reflected in his research with the REACH Alliance, focusing on addressing mental illness in rural India, and through his work as a Board Intern with NGO Transform Aid International/Baptist World Aid.
Jayden has written for Australia’s national broadcaster (ABC) about the power of connection in transforming people’s lives, and has featured alongside his wife on Channel 10’s The Project. In 2023 he supported the launch of an innovative social enterprise-style project, For The Love of Good, which reduces isolation, supports good mental health, tackles barriers to employment, and increases sustainability and climate education amongst marginalized community members in Melbourne.
In 2023, and as part of his Masters in Public Policy & Management at University of Melbourne, Jayden completed his thesis on the role and challenges for community-sector organizations in working with government to address homelessness in Victoria, and is supporting community consultation processes to foster better housing and homelessness strategy with all levels of Government in Australia.