Non formal education - experiential learning

Since I started the ToT I started to broaden my point of view on learning, but still it is not clear how to define what...

My backgrounds of learning and giving training comes from "experiential learning", not just learning by doing, but a cylce of experiencing, reflecting, and transferring/ applying in real life. Mostly I do put participants in a new, unknown situation by using the environment ( a hike or...) or making up an artificial task. Some will still remember the cave in Malaga :)and then the proces starts on personal and group level... ...
From experience I know that people learn a lot. I myself learned a lot about myself being put in these kind of tasks togehter with my peers. So for me it opened a world towards the perfect way of learning! EL felt very connected to my personal life and almost like informal learning. I never knew where I would end up, but somehow I felt safe to grow and try by sharing with others.

Coming into the world of european youth work, intercultural issues, I got more and more confronted with role plays and simulations activities and also group tasks. My experience in different methods did grow, but still EL was for me the(my) way of learning.

And now discussing about non formal education and reading about it, I am learning that EL is part of NFE, it is one of the methods besides the other methods. But on the other hand when I read the principles of NFE I seems like copy pasted from the EL principles. :)

So I am trying to make it understandable for myself and see a bit the differences and similarities.
IS NFE = EL? or is EL part of NFE?
It will help me to define better which method I am using, cause now everything for me is EL. So everythime I see things happening, or I am working on a frame for a training the cycles of EL (like Kolb,...) are in my head to give me direction in the flow of a program.
I think it will help me to get other point of views,ideas about this to make it more clear.

greets,
Nele

moving on in silence...

Seems somehow I got stuck in the process or I just don't find the time to do what I planned to do in one of these last days in Malaga.
Being more involved in the forum, reading on the library, putting all my knowledge together to get an overview on it,...
Frebruary is past and I didn't do anything of these. I still got one month to do something about it!! Yeah, cause then active working life is starting again.
Although I am not so focused on all this learning related to TOT, I feel that I am still learning and growing.
It is more on a personal level. I am feeling, experiencing and reflecting on how to balance my life in all these things I love to do. Before it seemed so easy: My job, my volunteer work and friends it was all related and if I was not busy with that I had time for myself where mostly I reflected or created new ideas for job or voluntary work. And now... well it seems that my social life is expanding outside all this busy life. So I need to find a new balance!
How to be a trainer and being away from home where you have your friends/ partner?
How to do your job when home and nobody is telling when to do what and your friends/partner are screaming for some attention?
And what with the desire to start again with a weekly sport evening?
Is it possible to be a trainer and have a social life besides it?
... ...
I know there is not an answer and it will be the way that seems the best for me, but till now I still don't know.
It was easy when I only had one focus or everything was linked, but I love my life now having a local social life that is more then just meeting once in 3 months.

I suppose this will be the question of the year and just by experiencing I will find the way how to balance this.

So let's see if I choose to spend some of my freetime in the TOT library or with friends outside gardening, walking or whatever... :)