underWorld
Embrace Your Shadow
underWorld
Training course on Embracing your Shadow Side
When: 20-29/1/2026 (including travel days)
Where: Statek Habří, Czech republic
For whom: 24 youth workers (6 partner organisations) from Czech Republic, Italy, Ukraine, Greece, Poland, and Spain
“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung,
“Psychology and Alchemy”
Main info
underWorld is an experiential learning program, training course, focused on letting youth workers to:
- strengthen their self-management
- boost their self-care and confidence
- support their coaching & mentoring skills
- discover their shadow, embrace it and use it to their advantage
- teach them basics of new methods, specifically: a) Disconnection from ICT, b) Storytelling, c) Basic somatic techniques, d) Psychodrama
VISION: Embracing the shadow
GOAL: Teach youth workers strategies on embracing their shadow side and facilitating the same experience for others
O1: Establish a safe space in which youth workers (including youth workers with fewer opportunities) can learn together
O2: Let youth worker experience and practice following methods: systemic work, body movement, storytelling, psychodrama, disconnection from ICT
O3: Boost youth workers well-being, resilience, and empathy
O4: Disseminate the learning
- 18+ years old
- idea on how to actively use it in their youth work
- resident of Czech Republic, Italy, Greece, Poland, Spain, Ukraine
- active in youth work (working with youngsters on daily or weekly basis)
- recognizing the need for self-care practices to be applied both in their lives, and shared with their youth as well
- You will sleep in a shared rooms
- You will support the dissemination (see below)
- You will take a full part in the whole programme
- You will fill all the evaluation forms after the project
- You will help with simple chores such as tidying the common areas or helping around the kitchen
- start with filling the application form.
- every partner organization (see below) will 4 participants
- if you are selected, you will receive a Confirmation Letter with more information regarding your participation. ONLY then you can start managing your travel arrangements and booking your tickets!
- if you have any questions, please contact us on an email info@czechinspire.eu
Learning Process & Programme
* This is a plan but it will most probably change according the current needs of the group.
Thus, you have an idea what is coming, but nothing is written in stone.
- Food will be vegetarian (but we will take into account your individual health diets)
- In the program parts, you can’t be under influence of any substance (hangover is not acceptable)
- Once being accepted and arriving, one is expected to participate and be present at all activities (unless having an urgent need for doing otherwise, i.e. feeling sick, or having work call)
- You will be helping with cooking
- It is ok to step out of the process if you don’t feel well.
Please, review our Emergency Procedure
You will be a part of international programme. Please, review our document on basic cultural do’s and don’ts, and get familiar with our Risk Assessment.
In Carl Jung’s analytical psychology, the “shadow” represents the unconscious and often repressed aspects of the psyche. It includes everything that a person consciously rejects or is unaware of, especially traits or desire considered undesirable, socially unacceptable, or in conflict with one’s self-image. These can be negative qualities such as selfishness, anger, and jealousy, but also positive traits that a person has not yet integrated into their conscious awareness.
Jung believed that acknowledging and integrating the shadow is crucial for psychological growth and self-awareness, a process he called “individuation.” This is done to let youth workers experience their whole self – to embrace all their parts of their being, make them conscious, and use them to their advantage. Teaching them this, we also allow them to support their target groups in embracing themselves.
For 5 days (2nd day evening to day 7 morning), we will ask you to turn off your phones, and get offline completely. It is part of disconnection method. We can even collect the phones from you, so you are not tempted by it (with your permission).
Please, plan your responsibilities accordingly. If there is a need to keep a phone (from safety reason), or a necessity to get online and deal about personal or professional issues within this period, it is possible but not preferable. If such a situation suppose to happen, we ask you to deal about it in a secluded are, so we are keeping the training area as digitally free zone.
If you want to give your beloved one an emergency contact, they can anytime write or call to Vojtěch Žák on +420 775 636 658, and he will pass the call, or information further on (note, they need to mention who they want to contact, otherwise I don’t know to whom to pass the message… and it is better if they write in English, as I most probably don’t speak their mother tongue).
Responsibilities
If you take part in this programme, European Union will invest around 1000 euro into you. It is expected you will pay it back by dissemination the learning as far as possible.
As a part of dissemination of this, following is expected of you:
1) Session for sending organisation
In your national team, you will organise a seminar for your sending organisation, and other relevant stakeholders (other organisation or youth workers), and teach them your key take aways from the programme.
2) Workshop for public
It is expected your are working with youth (13-30 years old), especially with youth with fewer opportunities. It is expected you will organise a workhop for them, based on your learning from this programme.
3) Hope app
INspire is managing free to used self-care mobile App called “Hope“
We will ask you to develop a new content for the App, as well as introducing it to your organisation, and youth you are working with.
INspire is responsible for
- photo-documentation of the training course, and posting about it on social networks
- developing a video explaining the basic methods we are using
- developing an eBook explaining the methodology of the TC
If you want, you are welcomed to help us with those.
Any other initiatives are welcomed, i.e.:
- talking about your learning on conferences
- podcast, blogposts, newspaper articles
- testimonials on social networks
We will ask you to report on everything you did through an Evaluation form 1 month after the TC.
You will be reimbursed for your journey only when your dissemination activities and reporting are done!
About underWorld
As youth workers, we are still human, and we are influenced in our work by our shadow (Jungian concept). There is a need to work with the subconscious. To answer this need, we embraced the work of Carl Jung, who was very fond of Myths.
One of the most common mythological concepts across different cultures is descend to the Underworld:
- Bard Orfeus descended to resurrect his deceased love Euridice.
- Sumerian goddess of love and fertility Inanna descends to the underworld to visit her sister, loses her powers, dies, and later on is reborn.
- Maya’s twins descend to the underworld to face the Lord of Death, and are returning victorious.
- Japanese god Izanagi after returning from the underworld takes a purifying bath which leads to creation of various gods, including the sun itself.
- King Arthur travels to Annwn to bring back the Cauldron of Annwn with a special ability to grant life and wisdom.
- And the list could continue…
Descend to the Underworld can represent many different things, but the unifying motive is death and rebirth, which represents the cyclical nature of life itself. It manifests itself in the Hero’s Journey, a story of one’s path towards challenges, through which one is transformed, growing into a better version of self.
Using the symbolic nature of stories and myths, we are going to send our heroes and heroines to the Underworld to encounter their Shadows.
“Myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation… The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive.”
– Joseph Campbell,
American mythologist, known for his work on the “hero’s journey”
“Myth is language: to be known, myth has to be told; it is a part of human speech… Myth tells us how we can understand human realities in a meaningful way.”
– Claude Lévi-Strauss,
French anthropologist
“Myths are original revelations of the preconscious psyche, involuntary statements about unconscious psychic happenings.”
– Carl Jung,
founder of analytical psychology
Accommodation – Statek Habří
The venue is a pension in the Vysočina region. Forest is nearby, there is a pool, stand-alone studio.
Rooms will be from 4 to 8 people. The rooms are equipped with bedsheets.
Website (in Czech).
- There will be 3 meals a day + 2 coffee breaks. The food provided during the program will be an environmentally-conscious vegetarian diet cooked by our amazing vegan chef who will be happy to provide you with information on sustainable and healthy cooking.
- Before the project, we will ask you about your special diet or allergies to arrange your needs in time.
- In case of need, we can do shopping from time to time, based on availability of our shopping crew.
- There are no shops nearby, please bring all the necessary stuff with you.
- Be at Křižanov (district Žďár nad Sázavou). You will be picked-up from there by bus or car.
- For traveling in Czech Republic, you can use this website: https://idos.idnes.cz/en/vlakyautobusymhdvse/spojeni/
Good tip:
It can be difficult to pronounce names of Czech cities. Put the names on a paper and show it to people! They will try to help.
Travel Reimbursement
The project is co-financed by the Erasmus+ programme.
The costs of the programme, including meals, accommodation, and travel costs (according to the maximum amount of money allowed per country) will be covered by the Erasmus+ programme. Please contact your sending organisation to learn more about the financial details, and how to arrange the booking of your travel tickets.
Very important!
The travel expenses will be reimbursed on the basis of tickets, bookings and invoices, so remember to keep them all with you!
Erasmus+ calculated maximum amount of travel reimbursement you can receive based on the distance band.
Czech, Poland and Ukrainian are obliged to travel green, meaning you are not allowed to travel by plane. Given amount of reimbursement is valid only if this condition is kept.
| Czech Republic | 56€ | green travel |
| Greece, Italy, Spain | 309€ | |
| Poland | 285€ | green travel |
| Ukraine | 417€ | green travel |
- If you are paying any fee to your sending organization, we don’t ask for any extra fee.
- If you are send for free, we ask you to pay a €50 participation fee. It will be send to your sending organization to cover their administration hours.
- If you can’t afford to pay any fee, that’s ok. Simply contact your partner organization or Project Supervisor (info@czechinspire.eu), and they will support you by discussing alternatives (i.e. you help us photos during the project, instead of the fee). We want to make participation open for everybody. All we care about is to have involved and motivated people.
Partner organisations
Project's Team
Vojtěch Žák
Project supervisor
I am a trainer, facilitator, coach, storyteller, and writer.
The main topics I am focused on are the labor market, social inclusion (mainly of the LGBT+ spectrum), and personal development. The main methods I use are storytelling, coaching, systemic work, body movement, art, gamification, and LARP.
info@czechinspire.eu
+420 775 636 658
Facebook
Veronica Spagna
facilitator
I have experiences in facilitating activities with young people, in formal and informal education about human rights, sustainable development and social inclusion using non-formal educational methods like embodiment, dance, arts and crafting. Creative and proactive, always a dancing step forward.