PAVE Pathways: Continuing Education Kits, Built by People Who Lived It
The PAVE Pathways catalog spans 225 continuing education topics across nine practice domains. Each kit is a self-contained training package with a facilitator guide, participant workbook, slide deck, and post-test, written for peer specialists and the behavioral health and public health teams that supervise them. Kits are designed to be delivered as-is or adapted to an organization's existing training calendar and documentation requirements.
Available now
LifeSync and Purpose
What Is LifeSync?
Finding the Place Where Who You Are Meets How You Live
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit introduces PAVE's purpose-alignment framework, showing how to find harmony between who a person is, what they love, and how they live day to day. It adapts the Ikigai model for peer-led growth rather than corporate goal setting, and frames purpose as an ongoing practice of alignment across personal values, professional skills, and community impact. Grounded in positive psychology, purpose-in-life research, and longevity studies. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in recovery and people returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
Understanding Survival, Building Trauma-Informed Support
Most people who struggle with substances are carrying pain that started long before the first use. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps frontline staff, peer leaders, and justice-impacted program teams understand how trauma and chronic stress sensitize the brain's threat-detection systems, why substance use so often works as an adaptive way to regulate overwhelming emotional pain, and how to build support around the three core trauma-informed principles of safety, choice, and empowerment. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study, and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in active recovery and people returning from incarceration.
Shame is one of the strongest forces keeping people stuck in substance use cycles, and it is one of the least directly addressed in most programs. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps peer specialists, counselors, and reentry staff teach the difference between "I did something bad" and "I am bad," show how shame drives secrecy, isolation, and return to use, and practice cognitive tools and self-forgiveness steps that disarm self-stigma. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, CCAR, and the research base on shame, guilt, and stigma in recovery. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in active recovery and people returning from incarceration.
The people doing the supporting carry a load nobody talks about. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps peer specialists, recovery coaches, caregivers, and frontline staff recognize the early warning signs of compassion fatigue, tell the difference between healthy empathy and absorbing other people's pain, and build steady practices for peer debriefing, reflection, and firm emotional boundaries. Grounded in SAMHSA, NIDA, CCAR, and the research base on secondary traumatic stress and burnout. Written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including people in recovery and people returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
Building Trust First: Community Engagement for Programs People Actually Show Up To
Why Trust Comes Before Outreach, and How to Earn It
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit teaches outreach and engagement staff how to build the kind of trust that turns a flyer into a full room, especially with communities that have been let down by outside organizations before. It treats trust as something earned through consistency and follow-through, not something assumed because an organization means well, and it gives practical, low-cost ways to meet people where they are. Built on community engagement and community-based participatory research guidance, and written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including peer specialists, outreach workers, and people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
Finding and Winning Small Grants: Resource Development for Grassroots Programs
A Peer-Led Approach to Funding Real Community Work
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit gives peer-led organizations without a dedicated development team a clear, step-by-step process for finding, applying for, and managing small grants that fund real community work. It treats grant writing as a learnable skill rather than a mystery reserved for people with advanced degrees, and it is honest about the paperwork and follow-through required after the money arrives. Built on established funder guidance and nonprofit capacity-building research, and written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including peer specialists, grassroots organizers, and people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now running or supporting programs.
From Peer to Leader: Growing Into Leadership Without Losing Your Roots
Mentorship Skills for Peer Specialists Stepping Into Their First Leadership Role
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit supports peer specialists and frontline staff who are stepping into supervisory or mentorship roles for the first time, often without any formal management training. It treats the shift from being a peer among peers to holding a leadership role as an identity change that deserves real preparation, not just a new title, and it is honest that carrying responsibility for others can put a leader's own recovery and wellbeing at risk if they do not protect it. Built on established peer supervision, mentorship, and workforce development guidance, and written in warm, plain language for adult learners, including people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now stepping into these roles.
Measuring What Matters: Simple Evaluation for Programs That Don't Have a Data Team
Tracking Outcomes and Telling Your Program's Real Story Without a Statistics Degree
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit gives frontline staff and program leads a plain-language way to track outcomes and tell their program's real story, without needing a statistics background or expensive software. It draws a clear line between counting activity and measuring impact, and it treats data collection as a habit the team can actually sustain, not a burden bolted on to satisfy a funder. Built on established nonprofit evaluation and outcomes measurement guidance, and written in warm, plain language for adult learners, including peer specialists, program coordinators, and people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now running or supporting programs.
Honoring Survivors, Building Whole-Person Wellness
More than half of people living with diagnosed HIV in the United States are now age 50 or older. This complete, facilitator-ready training kit helps frontline staff and peer leaders recognize the medical, cognitive, and emotional realities of aging with HIV, including AIDS Survivor Syndrome, and apply PAVE's R.A.C.E. framework and the MIPA principle to build programs that honor long-term survivors as experts, not afterthoughts. Grounded in HIV.gov, NIH HIVinfo, the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.
One representative topic from each of the nine practice domains, in development now. These previews show the shape of the kits being built next.
AddictionComing Soon
Understanding Cravings
A practical look at how cravings function in the brain and body, and how to navigate them without automatic reaction.
ADD-1.2 · In development
HIV and Chronic IllnessComing Soon
Living Well With HIV
Shifts focus from medical management to designing a vibrant, joyful life centered on wellness, hope, and personal growth.
HIV-3.23 · In development
See all available kits
Pick a practice domain to see the 25 topics inside it, each with its learning objective and core focus areas.
CommunityPulse and Engagement
25 topics
Featured kit, ready to order
Building Trust First: Community Engagement for Programs People Actually Show Up To
Why Trust Comes Before Outreach, and How to Earn It
This complete, facilitator-ready training kit teaches outreach and engagement staff how to build the kind of trust that turns a flyer into a full room, especially with communities that have been let down by outside organizations before. It treats trust as something earned through consistency and follow-through, not something assumed because an organization means well, and it gives practical, low-cost ways to meet people where they are. Built on community engagement and community-based participatory research guidance, and written in plain, warm language for adult learners, including peer specialists, outreach workers, and people in recovery or returning from incarceration who are now doing this work.
Before an agency can plan outreach, it has to understand where people already gather, who they already trust, and who holds informal influence in a community. This kit introduces community mapping as a visual tool for identifying key gathering spaces, gatekeepers, and both formal and informal leadership networks, so outreach can build on what already exists instead of starting from zero.
Learning objective: Learn to build a community map that identifies key gathering spaces, leaders, and networks.
What skills you will learn: How to identify community assets and gatekeepers, and how to map formal and informal leadership.
How this applies in the field: Any outreach team can use a community map to plan smarter routes and stronger partnerships from day one.
Coming SoonCPE-7.3
Conducting a Community Needs Assessment
A needs assessment can either produce real, actionable direction or a stack of data no one uses. This kit walks staff through the full process, from defining the assessment's purpose and target population to choosing the right data collection methods, and turning what is learned into prioritized recommendations a program can actually act on.
Learning objective: Learn to conduct a community needs assessment from planning through actionable findings.
What skills you will learn: How to define scope and target population, choose data collection methods, and prioritize findings into recommendations.
How this applies in the field: Any agency planning a new program or service can use this process to ground its plans in real community need.
Coming SoonCPE-7.4
Asset-Based Community Development
Every needs assessment risks describing a community only by what it lacks. This kit reframes that lens, teaching staff to identify what a community already has, individual skills, associations, and institutions, and to design programs that build on those existing strengths rather than starting from a deficit.
Learning objective: Learn to identify a community's existing strengths and design programs that build on them.
What skills you will learn: The difference between deficit-based and asset-based approaches, and how to map individual, associational, and institutional assets.
How this applies in the field: Any program can use this lens to design services that feel like a partnership, not a rescue.
Coming SoonCPE-7.5
Understanding Hard-to-Reach Populations
The label hard to reach often says more about a system than about the people it describes. This kit challenges that assumption directly, exploring the structural and historical barriers that keep people from trusting services, and reframing hard to reach as more accurately meaning hard to trust, with responsibility shifting from the community to the system trying to serve it.
Learning objective: Learn what actually makes a population hard to reach, and challenge assumptions about disengagement.
What skills you will learn: Structural and historical barriers to trust and access, and how responsibility shifts from community to system.
How this applies in the field: Any outreach program can use this reframe to design services that earn trust instead of blaming its absence.
Coming SoonCPE-7.6
Building Trust With Marginalized Communities
Trust with a community that has been harmed by institutions before is never earned quickly, and this kit does not pretend otherwise. It explores the slow, consistent work of acknowledging past harm honestly, practicing follow-through over time, and letting the community itself set the pace of the relationship instead of an outside timeline.
Learning objective: Learn the slow, consistent practices that build real trust with communities harmed by institutional betrayal.
What skills you will learn: How to acknowledge historical harm, practice consistency over time, and let community members set the relationship's pace.
How this applies in the field: Any organization working with a marginalized or historically harmed community can use this approach to build trust that actually lasts.
Coming SoonCPE-7.7
Culturally Responsive Outreach Strategies
A single outreach template rarely fits every community it is sent to. This kit teaches staff to practice cultural humility instead of assumed cultural competence, co-create materials with community members rather than only for them, and adapt language, imagery, and approach to reflect the specific culture being served.
Learning objective: Learn to adapt outreach materials and strategies to reflect the culture and values of the community served.
What skills you will learn: The practice of cultural humility, and how to co-create materials with community members instead of for them.
How this applies in the field: Any outreach team can use this to move away from one-size-fits-all materials toward approaches that actually land.
Coming SoonCPE-7.8
Demographic Data Collection and Analysis
Demographic data can either identify real service gaps or accidentally label the people it describes. This kit provides a practical, ethical framework for gathering this data, teaching staff to choose inclusive categories and language, balance collection with participant comfort, and use findings to improve services rather than sort people into boxes.
Learning objective: Learn to gather and interpret demographic data ethically and accurately.
What skills you will learn: How to choose respectful demographic categories, and how to balance data needs with participant privacy.
How this applies in the field: Any program collecting intake or enrollment data can use this to do so more respectfully and more usefully.
Coming SoonCPE-7.9
Designing Community Listening Sessions
A listening session only works if people actually feel safe enough to speak honestly. This kit is a step-by-step guide to planning sessions that generate real feedback, covering accessible times and locations, open-ended and non-leading discussion questions, and the specific facilitation choices that create a psychologically safe room.
Learning objective: Learn to plan and facilitate a community listening session that generates honest feedback.
What skills you will learn: How to choose accessible formats, write open-ended questions, and create a psychologically safe space.
How this applies in the field: Any agency wanting real community input, not just polite agreement, can use this format to get it.
Coming SoonCPE-7.10
Focus Groups: Planning and Facilitation
A focus group is a specific skill, not just a bigger interview. This kit covers the mechanics of running one well, from recruiting a group that actually represents the community being served, to facilitating without letting one voice dominate the room, to organizing what is said afterward into usable themes.
Learning objective: Learn to plan and facilitate a structured focus group that produces genuine qualitative input.
What skills you will learn: Recruitment strategies, facilitation techniques that avoid leading the group, and how to organize themes afterward.
How this applies in the field: Any program can use focus groups to gather deeper, shared perspective that a survey alone would miss.
Coming SoonCPE-7.11
One-on-One Community Interviews
Some of the most honest feedback comes from a single, well-run conversation. This kit teaches the interviewing skills needed to gather deep, individual insight, including how to build rapport quickly, ask open-ended questions that invite real stories, and practice active listening without interrupting or steering the conversation.
Learning objective: Learn to conduct a one-on-one interview that gathers deep, honest individual insight.
What skills you will learn: How to build quick rapport, ask open-ended questions, and practice active listening without interrupting.
How this applies in the field: Any staff member gathering feedback or stories can use this skill in almost any one-on-one setting.
Coming SoonCPE-7.12
Street and Mobile Outreach Strategies
Meeting people where they already are requires real planning, not just good intentions. This kit explores direct, in-the-field outreach, covering how to plan safe and effective mobile routes, build brief and respectful first-contact conversations, and balance an outreach team's goals with the autonomy and consent of the people they approach.
Learning objective: Learn to plan and conduct safe, respectful street and mobile outreach.
What skills you will learn: Route planning, first-contact conversation skills, and how to balance outreach goals with participant autonomy.
How this applies in the field: Any team doing in-the-field outreach can use this to work more safely and more respectfully.
Coming SoonCPE-7.13
Engaging Faith-Based and Cultural Institutions
Churches, mosques, temples, and cultural organizations often hold deep trust that a new program has not yet earned. This kit shows staff how to build authentic partnerships with these institutions, identifying shared values, respecting existing leadership structures and protocols, and co-hosting events that genuinely serve both the institution's goals and the program's mission.
Learning objective: Learn to build authentic, respectful partnerships with faith-based and cultural institutions.
What skills you will learn: How to identify shared values, respect institutional protocols, and co-host mutually beneficial events.
How this applies in the field: Any program can use these partnerships to reach community members through trusted, existing relationships.
Coming SoonCPE-7.14
Partnering With Schools and Youth-Serving Organizations
Reaching young people and families usually means going through trusted educational institutions first. This kit covers strategies for navigating school district approval processes, designing outreach materials that are age-appropriate and free of stigma, and building long-term relationships with the counselors and youth staff who become an ongoing bridge to families.
Learning objective: Learn strategies for reaching young people and families through trusted educational institutions.
What skills you will learn: School district approval processes, age-appropriate material design, and relationship-building with school staff.
How this applies in the field: Any program targeting youth or families can use this to build a sustainable, trusted pathway into schools.
Coming SoonCPE-7.15
Reaching Rural and Geographically Isolated Communities
Rural outreach comes with its own barriers that urban outreach strategies often miss entirely. This kit addresses the real challenges of limited transportation and internet access, the unique privacy concerns of small-town visibility, and the value of building partnerships with the anchor institutions, like churches and clinics, that already hold rural trust.
Learning objective: Learn the unique access, privacy, and transportation barriers faced by rural community members.
What skills you will learn: How to adapt outreach for limited transportation and internet access, and how to navigate small-town privacy concerns.
How this applies in the field: Any program serving rural areas can use this to design outreach that actually accounts for these realities.
Coming SoonCPE-7.16
Engaging LGBTQ+ Communities With Cultural Humility
Safety, not just visibility, is what LGBTQ+ community members are often looking for from a new program. This kit guides staff in building genuinely affirming outreach practices, including using inclusive and current language and pronouns, partnering with existing LGBTQ+-led organizations, and creating visibly safe spaces through signage, staff training, and clear policy.
Learning objective: Learn to build safe, affirming outreach practices for LGBTQ+ individuals and communities.
What skills you will learn: Inclusive language practices, partnership strategies with LGBTQ+-led organizations, and how to signal safety through policy and space.
How this applies in the field: Any program can use these practices to build outreach that LGBTQ+ community members can actually trust.
Coming SoonCPE-7.17
Engaging Justice-Involved Communities
People currently or formerly involved in the justice system face specific, well-documented barriers to trust, housing, and employment that outreach has to account for. This kit explores respectful, effective engagement strategies, appropriate ways to partner with corrections, probation, and reentry programs, and how to center dignity and second chances in every piece of messaging.
Learning objective: Learn respectful, effective strategies for engaging people currently or formerly involved in the justice system.
What skills you will learn: Reentry barriers to trust and access, and appropriate ways to partner with corrections and reentry programs.
How this applies in the field: Any program serving justice-impacted individuals can use this to build engagement centered on dignity, not judgment.
Coming SoonCPE-7.18
Language Access and Interpretation in Outreach
Translating a flyer word for word is not the same as making it actually understandable. This kit covers the practical and ethical sides of serving communities with limited English proficiency, including how to translate materials for real meaning rather than literal wording, when to use qualified interpreters instead of informal translation, and what legal requirements apply.
Learning objective: Learn the practical and ethical requirements of language access in outreach and services.
What skills you will learn: How to translate for meaning, when to use qualified interpreters, and what legal language access requirements apply.
How this applies in the field: Any program serving a linguistically diverse community can use this to meet both ethical and legal obligations.
Coming SoonCPE-7.19
Using Social Media and Digital Tools for Engagement
Digital outreach can extend a program's reach well past what in-person events alone can accomplish. This kit explores choosing platforms based on where a community actually spends time, balancing digital efforts with accessibility for those who remain offline, and using simple digital tools to gather quick, informal feedback between formal engagement events.
Learning objective: Learn to use digital tools to extend community engagement beyond in-person events.
What skills you will learn: How to choose the right platforms, balance digital and offline accessibility, and gather quick digital feedback.
How this applies in the field: Any program can use this to stay connected with its community between larger, formal engagement efforts.
Coming SoonCPE-7.20
Community Advisory Boards and MIPA in Practice
A community advisory board only means something if it holds real decision-making power. This kit shows how to build and sustain a board that puts the Meaningful Involvement of People living with HIV and AIDS into actual practice, covering how to recruit a board that reflects the community served and how to compensate members fairly for their time and expertise.
Learning objective: Learn to build a community advisory board that operationalizes MIPA in real, practical terms.
What skills you will learn: Recruitment practices that reflect the served community, fair compensation, and structures that give the board real authority.
How this applies in the field: Any HIV or community-focused program can use this to move MIPA from a stated value into daily practice.
Coming SoonCPE-7.21
Turning Community Input Into Program Design
Feedback that never leads anywhere quietly teaches a community to stop offering it. This kit bridges the gap between what people say in listening sessions and what actually gets built, teaching staff to prioritize themes into concrete design choices, close the loop by reporting back what changed, and avoid the engagement fatigue that comes from feedback with no visible impact.
Learning objective: Learn to turn community feedback into concrete, visible changes in program design.
What skills you will learn: How to prioritize feedback themes, close the loop with the community, and avoid engagement fatigue.
How this applies in the field: Any program collecting community input can use this to make sure that input actually shapes what gets built.
Coming SoonCPE-7.22
Measuring Community Engagement Effectiveness
It is possible to hold a lot of events and still not know if trust or participation is actually growing. This kit introduces simple ways to track whether engagement efforts are working over time, covering how to measure reach and repeat participation, gather feedback on how respected people felt, and adjust strategy based on what that data actually shows.
Learning objective: Learn simple ways to track whether community engagement efforts are building real trust and participation.
What skills you will learn: How to track reach and repeat engagement, and how to gather feedback on the participant experience itself.
How this applies in the field: Any program can use this to know whether its engagement strategy is actually working, not just staying busy.
Coming SoonCPE-7.23
Addressing Community Mistrust of Institutions
Skepticism toward a new program is often rooted in real, historical harm, not stubbornness. This kit provides tools for navigating that mistrust honestly, naming and validating the history behind it, leading with humility instead of defensiveness when challenged, and demonstrating trustworthiness through consistent, small actions over time rather than one big gesture.
Learning objective: Learn to navigate community skepticism rooted in real, historical institutional harm.
What skills you will learn: How to validate historical mistrust, lead with humility under challenge, and build trust through small, consistent actions.
How this applies in the field: Any organization facing community skepticism can use this approach instead of becoming defensive or giving up.
Coming SoonCPE-7.24
Sustaining Long-Term Community Relationships
A community relationship built during one funded project can quietly disappear once that project ends. This kit focuses on the ongoing maintenance a real partnership requires, staying present and visible between formal program cycles, publicly recognizing community partners, and renewing relationships even through funding gaps or staff turnover.
Learning objective: Learn to maintain community partnerships well beyond a single funded project.
What skills you will learn: How to stay visible between program cycles, recognize partners publicly, and renew relationships through staff or funding changes.
How this applies in the field: Any program can use this to build partnerships that outlast any one grant cycle or staff member.
Coming SoonCPE-7.25
Building a Community Engagement Plan
This capstone kit brings everything in the domain together into one actionable strategy. Staff learn to set clear engagement goals tied to program outcomes, choose the right mix of engagement methods and realistic timelines, and build accountability structures that keep the plan alive well after the training ends.
Learning objective: Learn to compile a complete, actionable community engagement plan for a program or agency.
What skills you will learn: How to set engagement goals tied to outcomes, choose methods and timelines, and build accountability into the plan.
How this applies in the field: Any agency ready to formalize its engagement approach can use this kit to turn scattered efforts into one clear strategy.
