Young People in Recovery
The life skills and peer support to help young people recover from substance use disorder — and reach their full potential.
Young People in Recovery is a national nonprofit that gives young people the life skills and peer community to recover from substance use disorder and build a life worth staying in recovery for: 55 communities across 16 states, with free all-recovery meetings, life-skills programming, harm reduction, and advocacy. It is also our flagship partnership. We design, build, and run YPR's entire digital presence, and in September 2026 we relaunched youngpeopleinrecovery.org itself: a custom WordPress theme with no page builder, a chapter map and finder, a provider locator with 49,854 SAMHSA records, a native shop on Stripe and Printful, events fed live from Pathwell, and the Team Portal behind it.
This was never just a website for Young People in Recovery. We design, build, and run a national movement's entire digital nervous system.
YPR isn't one website — it's a whole network. Over the years, this national recovery nonprofit's digital presence had grown into a constellation of separate sites and subdomains: the main organization site, a chapters platform, a Spanish-language site, a learning portal, two stores, a team directory, and an event microsite — each built at a different time, for a different need.
The hard part was never any single site. It was coherence — keeping every property on-brand, accessible, and secure, and genuinely manageable by a lean national team. That's the system we design, build, and run for YPR, so their team can focus on the mission instead of a fragile pile of one-off platforms only one person understands.
From a page builder to a platform.
The previous youngpeopleinrecovery.org was an Elementor build. On September 3, 2026 it was replaced by a custom theme with the chapter finder, provider locator, native shop and Team Portal built in, and nothing to update but WordPress itself.
One journey, applied to Young People in Recovery.
Clarify
We mapped the whole ecosystem, what each property is for, who it serves, and where effort was being duplicated or quietly drifting out of date. Every site got a clear job instead of overlapping ones.
Design
A shared YPR visual language and accessible component patterns across the network, so the org site, the chapters platform, the Spanish-language site, and the stores all read as one trustworthy organization, without forcing different needs into one rigid tool.
Activate
Each property does its job. The 2026 rebuild of the main site replaced an Elementor build with a custom theme: a US chapter map with a state picker and a search by city, state, ZIP or location; 45 chapter pages leads propose edits to; a buprenorphine provider locator with 49,854 SAMHSA records; a native shop with Printful products, Stripe Checkout, coupons and gift cards; Givebutter donations; eight spam-guarded forms; events read live from Pathwell; and the Team Portal, trainings and supply ordering behind one sign-in.
Scale
We host, monitor, and maintain the whole network so a lean national team can keep it running, adding chapters, courses, and campaigns over time without a risky rebuild.
What Young People in Recovery does
Chapters & peer community
55 communities across 16 states host free all-recovery meetings, sober socials, and pro-social events — a place to belong for anyone in or seeking recovery, and their allies.
EPIC life-skills
A life-skills curriculum delivered at 17 program sites nationwide, helping young people build the everyday skills that recovery is built on.
Harm reduction
21,626 naloxone doses and 35,017 fentanyl & xylazine test strips put directly into the community in 2025 — keeping young people alive long enough to find recovery.
Advocacy & inclusion
Statehouse advocacy and specialized support for veterans, LGBTQ+ individuals, families, and Spanish-speaking communities — making recovery visible and equitable.
RecoveryEdX learning portal
Self-paced courses for young people and CE-eligible trainings for the behavioral-health professionals who support them.
Recovery Corner Podcast
YPR's podcast amplifying recovery stories and the people moving the movement forward.
One organization. 7 connected properties.
The front door, with the shop, the Team Portal, chapters, programs, events, donations, and recovery support all built into one custom theme.
Visit ↗
The community platform: participants, chapter leads, keyword SMS check-ins, events, reports.
View case study →
The lifestyle apparel sub-brand, a custom store on Printful and Stripe.
View case study →
The learning platform: life-skills courses and CE-eligible professional trainings.
View case study →Curriculum and printed materials chapters and facilitators order on demand.
Visit ↗Free online meetings and culturally-specific resources for Hispanic/Latinx communities.
Visit ↗Event microsite for YPR's recovery expo.
Visit ↗A year of this work, in numbers.
Source: YPR 2025 Impact Report. On average that's a service delivered to someone in need every nine minutes — and 91¢ of every dollar spent goes straight to programs. Our digital work drives the reach behind it: 183K page views, 86K active users, and 113K sessions on the main site alone (Google Analytics, 2023–2025).
Found, not bought.
65.7% engagement rate from organic search, people find it, and they stay.
Optimistic Digital Agency really listened to our needs. They created a strategy and design that perfectly captures our organization's identity and allows our work to shine through. Highly recommended!