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.
LeadForward and Mentorship
25 topics
Featured kit, ready to order
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.
Adults learn differently than children, and training that ignores this rarely sticks. This kit introduces the basics of andragogy, the idea that adults learn best when material is relevant, self-directed, and grounded in their own experience, and teaches peer educators to design interactive, participatory sessions that respect what participants already know instead of lecturing at them.
Learning objective: Learn the core principles of how adults learn, and how to design training around them.
What skills you will learn: Andragogy basics like relevance, autonomy, and experience-based learning, and how to build interactive training instead of lecture-only sessions.
How this applies in the field: Any peer educator or trainer can use these principles to design sessions that actually hold an adult audience's attention.
Coming SoonLFM-9.3
Designing Training for Peers and Volunteers
A training session is stronger when it is built with intention from the start, not assembled the night before. This kit walks staff through the full design process, from writing clear and achievable learning objectives, to sequencing content from foundational to advanced, to building in real practice time so participants leave able to apply what they learned.
Learning objective: Learn to design a complete training session, from learning objectives through practice activities.
What skills you will learn: How to write clear learning objectives, sequence content logically, and build in hands-on practice time.
How this applies in the field: Any staff member asked to build a training from scratch can use this process to design one that actually works.
Coming SoonLFM-9.4
Onboarding New Peers and Volunteers
A new peer or volunteer's first weeks shape whether they stay engaged or quietly drift away. This kit provides a framework for welcoming and preparing new team members to succeed from day one, including a structured onboarding checklist, clear early conversations about roles and boundaries, and pairing each new person with an experienced buddy or mentor.
Learning objective: Learn to build a structured onboarding process that helps new peers and volunteers succeed from the start.
What skills you will learn: How to build a welcoming onboarding checklist, and how to pair new team members with an experienced buddy.
How this applies in the field: Any organization bringing on new peers or volunteers can use this to reduce early dropout and confusion.
Coming SoonLFM-9.5
From Participant to Leader: Building a Leadership Pipeline
Many future leaders start out as program participants, but the path from participant to leader is rarely mapped out clearly. This kit shows staff how to identify natural entry points for emerging leadership, create structured steps from participant to volunteer to staff, and remove unnecessary credential barriers that can quietly block someone with real potential from advancing.
Learning objective: Learn to build a clear pathway from program participant to trained peer leader.
What skills you will learn: How to identify entry points for leadership, and how to structure steps from participant to volunteer to staff.
How this applies in the field: Any organization can use this to build homegrown leadership instead of always hiring from outside.
Coming SoonLFM-9.6
Identifying Leadership Potential in Peers
Leadership qualities do not always look the way a resume expects them to. This kit teaches supervisors and mentors to recognize reliability, empathy, and influence within a peer group, look beyond formal education for signs of leadership readiness, and offer low-stakes opportunities that let someone test and build their skills before taking on more responsibility.
Learning objective: Learn to recognize leadership potential in peers, even when it does not look traditional on paper.
What skills you will learn: How to spot reliability, empathy, and influence, and how to offer low-stakes leadership opportunities.
How this applies in the field: Any supervisor or program manager can use this to find and grow leaders already present on their team.
Coming SoonLFM-9.7
Core Competencies for Entry-Level Staff
Every new employee needs a foundation of skills, regardless of the specific role they are stepping into. This kit defines that foundation clearly, covering professional communication and documentation basics, the responsibilities that come with confidentiality and mandated reporting, and the basic time management habits that make the rest of a job possible.
Learning objective: Learn the foundational skills every new employee needs to succeed, regardless of their specific role.
What skills you will learn: Professional communication and documentation basics, confidentiality and mandated reporting responsibilities, and basic time management.
How this applies in the field: Any new hire, in any role, can use this as a starting foundation for professional success.
Coming SoonLFM-9.8
Supervision and Support for New Employees
Supervising staff who bring their own lived experience into their work takes a different kind of attention. This kit equips supervisors with trauma-informed strategies for balancing accountability with compassion, recognizing when personal history intersects with job stress, and building regular, structured check-ins that catch problems early instead of after they become a crisis.
Learning objective: Learn trauma-informed supervision strategies for supporting staff who bring lived experience to their roles.
What skills you will learn: How to balance accountability with compassion, and how to build regular, structured check-ins with new staff.
How this applies in the field: Any supervisor managing staff with lived experience can use this to lead with both clarity and compassion.
Coming SoonLFM-9.9
Building a Peer Mentorship Program
A mentorship program works best when it is designed with intention rather than assembled informally. This kit gives agencies a step-by-step framework for launching one, covering how to define program goals, structure, and time commitment, recruit and screen mentors and mentees thoughtfully, and build simple tools to track how the mentorship is actually going.
Learning objective: Learn to launch a formal peer mentorship program from the ground up.
What skills you will learn: How to define program structure and time commitment, and how to recruit and screen mentors and mentees.
How this applies in the field: Any CBO or agency can use this framework to move from informal mentoring to a structured, sustainable program.
Coming SoonLFM-9.10
Mentor and Mentee Matching Best Practices
The success of a mentorship relationship often comes down to how thoughtfully it was matched in the first place. This kit focuses on the art and science of pairing mentors and mentees based on goals, personality, and shared experience, setting clear expectations at the start for both parties, and building in a process to re-match when a pairing simply is not working.
Learning objective: Learn how to thoughtfully match mentors and mentees for a successful relationship.
What skills you will learn: Matching criteria like goals and shared experience, and how to build in a re-matching process when needed.
How this applies in the field: Any mentorship program can use this to raise its success rate and reduce early dropout from bad matches.
Coming SoonLFM-9.11
Setting Boundaries in Mentoring Relationships
Mentoring relationships built on shared lived experience come with boundary challenges that generic mentoring advice often misses. This kit addresses those challenges directly, distinguishing mentorship from friendship or clinical support, helping mentors recognize and avoid dual relationships and role confusion, and modeling healthy boundaries as part of the mentoring process itself.
Learning objective: Learn to set and maintain healthy boundaries in a mentoring relationship built on shared lived experience.
What skills you will learn: The difference between mentorship, friendship, and clinical support, and how to recognize dual relationships.
How this applies in the field: Any peer mentor can use this to protect both their own wellbeing and the integrity of the mentoring relationship.
Coming SoonLFM-9.12
Coaching vs. Mentoring vs. Supervising
These three support roles get confused often, and that confusion can create real problems inside a peer-driven organization. This kit clarifies the differences clearly, coaching as goal-focused and short-term, mentoring as relationship-focused and longer-term, and supervising as accountability-focused oversight tied directly to a job role.
Learning objective: Learn to clearly distinguish between coaching, mentoring, and supervising roles.
What skills you will learn: The specific focus, timeline, and purpose of each of the three support roles.
How this applies in the field: Any organization can use this clarity to reduce role confusion and set clearer expectations for staff.
Coming SoonLFM-9.13
Professional Development Planning for Peers
Growth happens faster with a plan than without one. This kit teaches peers to build individualized growth plans, setting realistic goals aligned with their own values, identifying the training, credentials, or experiences needed to advance, and reviewing and updating that plan on a regular schedule instead of letting it sit untouched.
Learning objective: Learn to build a personalized professional development plan aligned with long-term career goals.
What skills you will learn: How to set values-aligned goals, and how to identify the training or credentials needed to reach them.
How this applies in the field: Any peer staff member can use this to take real ownership of their own career growth.
Coming SoonLFM-9.14
Turning Lived Experience Into a Professional Asset
A history of trauma, addiction, incarceration, or illness is too often treated as something to hide on a resume. This kit reframes that history as a genuine source of professional expertise and credibility, teaching peers to name the specific skills their lived experience has built, present that story professionally in resumes and interviews, and protect their own boundaries while doing so.
Learning objective: Learn to reframe personal lived experience as real, marketable professional expertise.
What skills you will learn: How to name the skills lived experience builds, and how to present that story professionally while protecting personal boundaries.
How this applies in the field: Any peer professional can use this to walk into a resume or interview with more confidence and clarity.
Coming SoonLFM-9.15
Public Speaking and Storytelling for Peer Leaders
Sharing a personal story in public takes real skill, and doing it safely takes even more. This kit builds confidence in that specific skill, teaching peer leaders to structure a story around a clear takeaway message, practice pacing and audience connection, and make deliberate decisions about what to share, what to protect, and when.
Learning objective: Learn to share a personal story publicly, safely, and with real purpose.
What skills you will learn: How to structure a story around a clear message, and how to decide what to share and what to protect.
How this applies in the field: Any peer leader speaking at a training, panel, or event can use this to tell their story with more confidence and control.
Coming SoonLFM-9.16
Building Confidence in New Facilitators
First-time trainers almost always carry some fear and self-doubt into the front of the room. This kit offers practical strategies for moving past that, normalizing nervousness as a normal part of the learning process, practicing through low-stakes co-facilitation opportunities, and building a real toolkit for handling difficult questions or unexpected moments.
Learning objective: Learn practical strategies for building confidence as a first-time facilitator or trainer.
What skills you will learn: How to normalize nervousness, practice through co-facilitation, and build a toolkit for difficult moments.
How this applies in the field: Any new facilitator can use this to walk into their first sessions with more preparation and less fear.
Coming SoonLFM-9.17
Succession Planning for CBOs and Nonprofits
Institutional knowledge can walk out the door with a single staff departure if nothing was ever written down. This kit prepares organizations to sustain leadership and knowledge through transitions, identifying key roles and knowledge at risk of being lost, cross-training staff to reduce single points of failure, and documenting what matters before a transition happens, not during one.
Learning objective: Learn to prepare an organization to sustain leadership and knowledge through staff transitions.
What skills you will learn: How to identify at-risk institutional knowledge, and how to cross-train staff to reduce single points of failure.
How this applies in the field: Any CBO or nonprofit can use this to protect itself from the disruption a sudden departure can cause.
Coming SoonLFM-9.18
Creating Career Ladders in Peer Roles
Real advancement pathways in peer support and community health roles are rare, and their absence pushes talented staff out the door. This kit shows agencies how to design them intentionally, mapping entry-level to senior peer roles with clear requirements, aligning pay and title increases with growing responsibility, and communicating those advancement pathways clearly to every member of staff.
Learning objective: Learn to design real, structured advancement pathways within peer support roles.
What skills you will learn: How to map entry-level to senior roles, and how to align pay and title with growing responsibility.
How this applies in the field: Any agency employing peer staff can use this to retain talent by offering a visible path forward.
Coming SoonLFM-9.19
Credentialing and Certification Pathways for Peers
Professional credentials can give peer staff real legitimacy and portability in their careers, but the landscape of options can be confusing to navigate alone. This kit reviews common certifications, including Peer Support Specialist and Recovery Coach credentials, explains state-specific requirements, and covers how an agency can support staff financially and logistically to pursue them.
Learning objective: Learn the landscape of peer support credentials and how to help staff pursue them.
What skills you will learn: An overview of common certifications, and state-specific certification requirements.
How this applies in the field: Any agency can use this to support staff in building the professional legitimacy these credentials provide.
Coming SoonLFM-9.20
Managing Up: Peers Communicating With Leadership
Peer staff often carry front-line insight that leadership genuinely needs to hear, but delivering it well takes skill. This kit builds communication tools for navigating relationships with supervisors and executives, framing concerns and ideas in solution-oriented language, understanding organizational hierarchy without losing one's own voice, and building credibility through consistency and follow-through.
Learning objective: Learn to communicate effectively with supervisors and leadership as a peer staff member.
What skills you will learn: How to frame concerns in solution-oriented language, and how to build credibility through consistency.
How this applies in the field: Any peer staff member can use this to make sure their front-line insight actually reaches decision-makers.
Coming SoonLFM-9.21
Conflict Resolution for Emerging Leaders
Disagreement inside a team is inevitable, but how a new leader handles it determines whether it damages trust or builds it. This kit equips emerging leaders with practical tools for navigating tension, distinguishing healthy conflict from harmful conflict, using direct and respectful communication to address issues early, and knowing exactly when a conflict needs to be escalated to a supervisor or HR.
Learning objective: Learn practical tools for navigating and resolving conflict as a new leader.
What skills you will learn: How to distinguish healthy from harmful conflict, and when to escalate an issue rather than handle it alone.
How this applies in the field: Any new leader or supervisor can use this to address tension early, before it grows into a bigger problem.
Coming SoonLFM-9.22
Retaining and Supporting Peer Staff
Peer-driven organizations face retention challenges that generic HR advice often does not address. This kit identifies the specific reasons peer staff tend to leave the field, and offers concrete ways to build fair compensation and recognition practices, and to create a culture where peer staff feel genuinely valued rather than tokenized for their lived experience.
Learning objective: Learn the specific reasons peer staff leave the field, and how to build a culture that retains them.
What skills you will learn: Common drivers of peer staff turnover, and fair compensation and recognition practices.
How this applies in the field: Any organization employing peer staff can use this to reduce turnover and build a more loyal team.
Coming SoonLFM-9.23
Preventing Burnout in Peer Leadership Roles
Leading with lived experience carries emotional demands that traditional leadership roles often do not. This kit focuses specifically on sustaining that work long-term, teaching leaders and their organizations to recognize the early warning signs of burnout and compassion fatigue, and to build organizational practices that protect staff wellbeing and normalize rest as a leadership strength, not a weakness.
Learning objective: Learn to recognize and prevent burnout specific to peer leadership roles.
What skills you will learn: Early warning signs of burnout and compassion fatigue, and organizational practices that protect staff wellbeing.
How this applies in the field: Any peer leader or their supervisor can use this to sustain the work over the long term, not just survive it.
Coming SoonLFM-9.24
Building Inclusive Leadership Teams
A leadership team should authentically reflect the community an organization serves, and that does not happen by accident. This kit explores how to remove unnecessary barriers to leadership roles, actively recruit leaders with diverse lived experiences, and build decision-making spaces where every voice at the table actually carries real weight.
Learning objective: Learn to build a leadership team that authentically reflects the community an organization serves.
What skills you will learn: How to remove barriers to leadership, and how to build decision-making spaces where every voice carries weight.
How this applies in the field: Any organization can use this to build a leadership team that genuinely represents the people it serves.
Coming SoonLFM-9.25
Sustaining a Leadership Pipeline for the Future
This capstone kit shows agencies how to keep developing new leaders instead of relying on the same few people over and over. Staff learn to build leadership development directly into ongoing operations, continuously identify and invest in the next generation of leaders, and measure the health of the pipeline itself, adjusting strategy as the organization's needs change over time.
Learning objective: Learn to build an ongoing, sustainable pipeline of new leaders instead of relying on the same few people.
What skills you will learn: How to build leadership development into daily operations, and how to measure pipeline health over time.
How this applies in the field: Any organization ready to think beyond its current leaders can use this to build for its next generation.
