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.
LifeSync and Purpose
25 topics
Featured kit, ready to order
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.
Guides peers through identifying their unique reason to rise each day by exploring passion, capability, and community need.
Learning objective: Learn to identify a personal sense of purpose by exploring passion, capability, and community need together.
What skills you will learn: How to reflect on past struggles to uncover core motivations, and how to identify where personal joy meets community contribution.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone move from feeling adrift to naming a real, personal reason to engage each day.
Coming SoonLSP-5.3
The Four Pillars of LifeSync
Explores the four pillars (Passion, Purpose, Impact, and Sustainability) as the foundation for a balanced, meaningful life.
Learning objective: Understand the four pillars of Passion, Purpose, Impact, and Sustainability as a framework for a balanced life.
What skills you will learn: How to evaluate personal strength across each pillar, and how to build routines that prevent burnout.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this framework to help someone build a life that is meaningful without being unsustainable.
Coming SoonLSP-5.4
Discovering What Lights You Up
Uncovers hidden passions, natural curiosities, and creative interests that bring deep joy and renewed energy.
Learning objective: Learn to uncover hidden passions and interests that bring genuine joy and energy.
What skills you will learn: How to map activities that create timeless focus, and how to safely reconnect with childhood interests.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone rediscover joy that got buried during a difficult period of life.
Coming SoonLSP-5.5
Mapping Your Strengths
Provides structured self-assessment tools to identify natural gifts, acquired skills, and wisdom earned through lived experience.
Learning objective: Learn to identify and value natural gifts, acquired skills, and wisdom earned through lived experience.
What skills you will learn: How to distinguish natural talents from trained skills and lived wisdom, and how to reclaim lived experience as a professional asset.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone see their full range of strengths, including the ones no diploma represents.
Coming SoonLSP-5.6
Seeing What the World Needs
Gently directs attention outward to identify pressing needs, gaps, and advocacy opportunities within your local community.
Learning objective: Learn to connect personal purpose to a real, visible need within a local community.
What skills you will learn: How to conduct a simple, peer-focused community needs assessment, and how to align personal gifts with advocacy.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone find where their purpose can make a tangible difference locally.
Coming SoonLSP-5.7
Turning Purpose Into Paycheck
Explores the transition to sustainable peer-support employment, professional consulting, or running a social enterprise.
Learning objective: Learn how to responsibly transition personal purpose into sustainable, paid work.
What skills you will learn: How to structure and value expert-led services, and how to maintain ethical boundaries while earning a livelihood.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone explore turning their expertise into real, sustainable income.
Coming SoonLSP-5.8
The Power of Community in LifeSync
Emphasizes the essential role of healthy mutual connection, safety, and peer support networks in sustaining purpose.
Learning objective: Understand the essential role healthy community connection plays in sustaining a sense of purpose.
What skills you will learn: How isolation stalls personal alignment, and how to build peer-led spaces centered on shared goals.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build the community support that makes purpose sustainable long term.
Coming SoonLSP-5.9
LifeSync and Longevity
Shares research-backed lessons from the world's Blue Zones, showing how clear purpose directly supports health and longevity.
Learning objective: Understand the research-backed connection between a clear sense of purpose and long-term health.
What skills you will learn: Lessons from Blue Zone research on movement, nutrition, and social connection, and how to design a simple longevity plan.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone see purpose as a genuine health practice, not just an abstract idea.
Coming SoonLSP-5.10
Daily Sync Rituals
Focuses on designing simple, small daily routines (micro-habits) that ground your attention and keep you aligned with purpose.
Learning objective: Learn to design small, daily rituals that keep attention aligned with personal purpose.
What skills you will learn: How to build low-barrier rituals like gratitude logging, and how to anchor new habits to existing daily routines.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build sustainable daily practices instead of relying on willpower alone.
Coming SoonLSP-5.11
Flow and LifeSync
Teaches peers how to cultivate deep focus, reduce screen distractions, and enter states of flow to boost joy and productivity.
Learning objective: Learn to cultivate flow states that boost joy, focus, and productivity.
What skills you will learn: How to find the balance between challenge and skill that produces flow, and strategies to minimize digital distraction.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone access deep focus and satisfaction in their daily work.
Coming SoonLSP-5.12
Values Alignment
Helps participants define their non-negotiable core values and ensure their career, relationships, and time match them.
Learning objective: Learn to identify core values and close the gap between those values and daily choices.
What skills you will learn: How to clarify top values through reflection, and how to draft boundary scripts that defend them.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone realign their life choices with what actually matters to them.
Coming SoonLSP-5.13
Gratitude as Sync Fuel
A closer look at active gratitude practices that boost emotional resilience and support a positive outlook.
Learning objective: Understand the brain science behind gratitude and how to use it as an active practice.
What skills you will learn: How to move from passive gratitude lists to active gratitude actions, and how to share gratitude in peer group settings.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to introduce a simple, powerful practice that fuels emotional resilience and hope.
Coming SoonLSP-5.14
Minimalism and LifeSync
Teaches participants how decluttering their physical surroundings mindfully clears mental space for what truly matters.
Learning objective: Understand the connection between physical clutter and mental clarity.
What skills you will learn: A mindful, low-pressure approach to decluttering, and how to release attachments to items that no longer serve current goals.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone create a physical environment that supports their mental clarity and purpose.
Coming SoonLSP-5.15
Resilience Through Purpose
Explores how a clear, authentic sense of purpose acts as a powerful buffer against setbacks and unexpected life crises.
Learning objective: Understand how a clear sense of purpose builds resilience against life's setbacks.
What skills you will learn: How to use a personal purpose statement as a grounding anchor, and how to extract growth from setbacks.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone draw on their purpose as real strength during a difficult period.
Coming SoonLSP-5.16
Mindfulness Meets LifeSync
Integrates mindfulness practices into purpose-alignment, showing how presence supports clear daily choices.
Learning objective: Learn how mindfulness practices support clearer, more purpose-aligned daily choices.
What skills you will learn: How to use mindful breathing before major decisions, and how to observe thoughts with curiosity rather than judgment.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to bring a calmer, more intentional presence into both their own choices and their support of others.
Coming SoonLSP-5.17
Life Design 101
Provides a practical, design-thinking framework to intentionally prototype and build a life aligned with your values.
Learning objective: Learn to apply design-thinking principles to intentionally build a values-aligned life.
What skills you will learn: How to conduct small, low-risk life experiments, and how to reframe life changes as ongoing learning.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone make major life changes feel manageable instead of overwhelming.
Coming SoonLSP-5.18
Work That Feels Like Purpose
Guides peers in aligning their careers with their calling, seeking roles that offer meaning, growth, and sustainability.
Learning objective: Learn to align current or future work with personal values and sense of purpose.
What skills you will learn: How to audit a job for values alignment, and how to design a safe transition plan toward purpose-driven work.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone find more meaning in their current role or plan a safe pivot.
Coming SoonLSP-5.19
Balanced Living
Focuses on finding healthy harmony across personal health, professional goals, family life, and your inner self.
Learning objective: Learn to identify and address imbalance across the major areas of life.
What skills you will learn: How to set firm boundaries around rest and screen time, and how to adapt schedules for consistent health.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build a genuinely sustainable, balanced daily life.
Coming SoonLSP-5.20
Creativity as LifeSync
Encourages creative exploration and personal innovation as a primary avenue for self-discovery and recovery.
Learning objective: Understand creativity as a legitimate, powerful avenue for self-discovery and healing.
What skills you will learn: How to overcome creative blocks with low-pressure approaches, and how to collaborate with peers on creative projects.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone reconnect with creativity as part of their own growth and purpose.
Coming SoonLSP-5.21
Service as Sync
Shows how lifting others up through altruistic service directly reinforces personal alignment, hope, and wellness.
Learning objective: Understand how service to others reinforces a person's own sense of purpose and wellness.
What skills you will learn: The helper-therapy principle, and how to practice boundaried service that prevents compassion fatigue.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone find service opportunities that heal them, too, not just drain them.
Coming SoonLSP-5.22
The Science of Well-Being and LifeSync
A research-backed exploration of positive psychology, detailing evidence-based habits that build stable happiness.
Learning objective: Understand the positive psychology research behind stable, lasting well-being.
What skills you will learn: How to build habits like social connection and acts of kindness, and how to track personal wellness data.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this evidence base to design daily habits that reliably support well-being.
Coming SoonLSP-5.23
LifeSync in Later Life
Addresses purpose, engagement, and vitality in later life, showing how aging survivors can thrive and share their legacy.
Learning objective: Understand how purpose, engagement, and vitality continue to evolve in later life.
What skills you will learn: How to cultivate new roles and mentoring relationships in later life, and how to build intergenerational bonds.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help older survivors find continued purpose and legacy, not just maintenance.
Coming SoonLSP-5.24
Global Views on Purpose
Explores cross-cultural concepts of purpose (Ikigai, Plan de Vida, Ubuntu) to enrich personal wellness perspectives.
Learning objective: Learn cross-cultural concepts of purpose and how they can enrich personal and community wellness.
What skills you will learn: Cross-cultural purpose frameworks like Ikigai and Ubuntu, and how to integrate them into peer support.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to bring a broader, more inclusive lens to conversations about purpose and community.
Coming SoonLSP-5.25
Write Your LifeSync Statement
The capstone module guiding peers to compile their values, passions, and goals into a clear personal purpose blueprint.
Learning objective: Learn to compile personal values, passions, and goals into one clear purpose statement.
What skills you will learn: How to synthesize strengths and values into a concise statement, and how to use it as a daily decision-making checklist.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this capstone exercise to leave with one clear, portable document that guides their choices going forward.
