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.
Recovery
25 topics
Featured kit, ready to order
Overcoming Shame and Guilt
Releasing Shame, Restoring Dignity
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.
Deconstructs the single-track recovery myth by exploring the diverse medical, spiritual, and peer pathways available.
Learning objective: Understand that recovery happens through many different pathways, not one single approach.
What skills you will learn: How to compare clinical, faith-based, secular, and harm-reduction-based recovery pathways.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to support someone in choosing their own path instead of steering them toward one model.
Coming SoonREC-2.2
12-Step Programs: AA and NA
An objective, informative look at 12-step fellowships, their structure, and how they support community-based recovery.
Learning objective: Understand the history, structure, and principles of 12-step fellowships like AA and NA.
What skills you will learn: How anonymity and sponsorship work, and how to explain 12-step language in accessible terms.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to give someone an honest, judgment-free picture of whether 12-steps might work for them.
Coming SoonREC-2.3
Refuge Recovery and Buddhist Approaches
Explores Buddhist-inspired, mindfulness-based recovery paths centered on meditation and compassion.
Learning objective: Understand Buddhist-inspired, mindfulness-based approaches to recovery.
What skills you will learn: The Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path as a recovery framework, and meditation techniques for processing cravings.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to offer a secular, mindfulness-centered option to someone who wants an alternative to traditional 12-step language.
Coming SoonREC-2.4
SMART Recovery: A Cognitive Approach
Introduces Self-Management and Recovery Training, focusing on self-empowerment and scientific, cognitive tools.
Learning objective: Understand the Self-Management and Recovery Training model and its cognitive-behavioral tools.
What skills you will learn: The 4-Point Program framework, and practical tools like cost-benefit analysis and trigger logs.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to offer a structured, secular, self-directed option for someone who prefers concrete cognitive tools.
Coming SoonREC-2.5
Peer Support in Recovery
Examines the distinct, non-clinical value of peer relationships and how shared lived experience promotes healing.
Learning objective: Understand the distinct, non-clinical value peer relationships bring to recovery.
What skills you will learn: How to define the peer support role clearly, and how peer connection provides proof of concept for hope.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to articulate the specific value they bring that clinical staff alone cannot provide.
Coming SoonREC-2.6
Sponsorship and Mentorship
Details the role of mentorship in recovery, establishing healthy boundaries, and how to seek or provide guidance.
Learning objective: Learn to build and maintain a healthy, boundaried sponsorship or mentoring relationship.
What skills you will learn: The expectations and responsibilities of the sponsor role, and how to navigate power dynamics safely.
How this applies in the field: Any peer serving as a sponsor or mentor can use this to protect both people in the relationship.
Coming SoonREC-2.7
Recovery Capital: Resources for Sustained Change
Teaches peers how to audit and expand their internal and external resources to support long-term recovery.
Learning objective: Understand the four domains of recovery capital and how to assess and build them.
What skills you will learn: How to conduct a personalized recovery capital assessment, and how to leverage existing strengths against systemic barriers.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this framework to help someone see and build the resources that sustain long-term recovery.
Coming SoonREC-2.8
The Role of Spirituality in Recovery
An inclusive, open exploration of how connection to something larger than oneself supports healing.
Learning objective: Understand the broad, inclusive role spirituality can play in recovery, separate from organized religion.
What skills you will learn: How to distinguish personal spirituality from organized religion, and simple secular spiritual practices.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to support someone's spiritual dimension of recovery without imposing a specific belief system.
Coming SoonREC-2.9
Creative Arts in Recovery
Focuses on utilizing creative self-expression (painting, writing, music, theater) to process emotions and heal.
Learning objective: Learn to use creative self-expression as a tool for processing emotion and trauma in recovery.
What skills you will learn: How creative arts bypass verbal blockages, and how to set up a low-cost creative workshop.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to offer a creative outlet to someone who struggles to process pain verbally.
Coming SoonREC-2.10
Journaling for Healing and Growth
Provides participants with structured journaling frameworks to gain emotional clarity and track personal progress.
Learning objective: Learn structured journaling techniques that support emotional clarity and track recovery progress.
What skills you will learn: Techniques like stream-of-consciousness and gratitude logging, and how to build a consistent daily writing habit.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to give someone a low-cost, private tool for ongoing emotional processing.
Coming SoonREC-2.11
Meditation for Recovery
A practical introduction to meditation techniques designed to calm the nervous system and build mental clarity.
Learning objective: Learn practical meditation techniques that calm the nervous system and build mental clarity.
What skills you will learn: Breath-focused and body scan meditation techniques, and how to fit short practices into a busy day.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to offer someone an accessible, low-barrier meditation practice, not an intimidating one.
Coming SoonREC-2.12
Yoga and Mind-Body Healing
Explores how trauma-informed gentle somatic movement helps release stored stress from the physical body.
Learning objective: Understand how trauma-informed, gentle movement supports emotional and physical healing.
What skills you will learn: The connection between posture, breath, and emotional state, and simple, accessible stretches for any body type.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to offer a gentle, trauma-informed movement option that does not require prior yoga experience.
Coming SoonREC-2.13
Physical Fitness and Recovery
Connects regular physical movement to chemical restoration in the brain and improved emotional well-being.
Learning objective: Understand how physical movement supports both brain chemistry and emotional well-being in recovery.
What skills you will learn: How exercise boosts dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins, and how to design an inclusive movement plan.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build a realistic, sustainable movement habit that supports their recovery.
Coming SoonREC-2.14
Nutrition and Sobriety
Highlights the essential role of balanced nutrition in restoring physical health and stabilizing mood in early recovery.
Learning objective: Understand how nutrition directly affects mood and stability in early recovery.
What skills you will learn: The gut-brain connection between food and mood, and budget-friendly meal-planning strategies.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone stabilize their mood and energy through practical, affordable nutrition changes.
Coming SoonREC-2.15
Self-Care Practices for Stability
A foundational module on establishing strong daily boundaries and practices that protect physical and emotional energy.
Learning objective: Learn to build daily self-care practices that protect physical and emotional stability.
What skills you will learn: How to identify personal areas of depletion, and how to build a personalized daily self-care checklist.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone treat self-care as a real recovery obligation, not an afterthought.
Coming SoonREC-2.16
Building New Routines
Provides a practical guide to designing structured daily schedules that reduce boredom and trigger opportunities.
Learning objective: Learn to build structured daily routines that reduce boredom and trigger opportunities.
What skills you will learn: The science of habit formation through anchor habits, and how to design a balanced weekly schedule.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone fill unstructured time with routines that actively support their recovery.
Coming SoonREC-2.18
Service Work as Recovery Practice
Explores the healing power of altruism, showing how lifting others up reinforces personal recovery.
Learning objective: Understand how service work and helping others reinforces a person's own recovery.
What skills you will learn: The helper-therapy principle, and how to find volunteer opportunities aligned with personal values.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone channel their recovery into service without burning themselves out.
Coming SoonREC-2.19
Recovery and Employment
Guides peers through the process of seeking work, explaining resume gaps, and maintaining sobriety on the job.
Learning objective: Learn to navigate seeking and maintaining employment while sustaining recovery.
What skills you will learn: How to draft a resume that addresses employment gaps, and how to prepare for interview conversations about personal history.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone re-enter the workforce with a real plan for staying stable on the job.
Coming SoonREC-2.20
Housing and Recovery Stability
Addresses the critical need for safe, drug-free living environments and how to find and secure stable housing.
Learning objective: Understand the role safe, stable housing plays in recovery, and how to help someone find it.
What skills you will learn: How Oxford Houses and transitional residences work, and how to navigate legal or credit barriers to housing.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone secure and maintain a genuinely safe, substance-free living environment.
Coming SoonREC-2.21
Relating to Family in Recovery
A practical guide to navigating family healing, managing expectations, and establishing compassionate boundaries.
Learning objective: Learn to navigate family healing and boundary-setting during recovery.
What skills you will learn: How to recognize outdated family patterns tied to active use, and how to set limits around high-conflict dynamics.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone rebuild family relationships with realistic expectations and real boundaries.
Coming SoonREC-2.22
Managing Social Situations Without Substances
Equips peers with exit strategies, scripts, and confidence to navigate events where substances are present.
Learning objective: Learn practical strategies for navigating social situations where substances are present.
What skills you will learn: How to prepare exit plans and sober allies for events, and verbal scripts for declining substances comfortably.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone build confidence for social situations instead of isolating from them entirely.
Coming SoonREC-2.23
Digital Recovery Communities
Provides an overview of virtual support groups, apps, and online forums to expand access to recovery resources.
Learning objective: Understand the landscape of virtual recovery support and how to use it safely.
What skills you will learn: How to navigate online recovery spaces and habit-tracking apps, and how to protect digital privacy and boundaries.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to expand someone's access to recovery support beyond what is available in person.
Coming SoonREC-2.24
Celebrating Milestones and Sobriety Anniversaries
Explores the importance of honoring progress, showing gratitude, and celebrating milestones to build motivation.
What skills you will learn: How to plan meaningful, substance-free anniversary rituals, and how to use milestones for reflection.
How this applies in the field: Any peer can use this to help someone mark real progress in a way that builds momentum instead of letting it pass unnoticed.
Coming SoonREC-2.25
Living a Recovery-Oriented Life
Shifts focus from surviving without substances to thriving in a life filled with purpose, values, and authenticity.
Learning objective: Learn to build a full, purpose-driven life centered on recovery rather than just managing abstinence.
What skills you will learn: How to define personal values and align daily choices with them, and how to develop a lifelong growth mindset.
How this applies in the field: Any peer well into recovery can use this to move from surviving day to day into actively living a purpose-driven life.
