At Camp Pride, Kristin Souza is helping LGBTQ+ adults reconnect with their inner child and create a summer tradition of their own.
After coming out later in life, Kristin Souza began grieving experiences she had missed while not living as her full queer self. In her 30s, she found that many queer spaces centered on partying, which no longer reflected where she was in her life. She wanted community, but she also wanted a chance to experience some of what she felt she had missed.
“I realized that I could just recreate those experiences!” she shared with us.
That realization became Camp Pride, a five-day summer camp for LGBTQ+ adults ages 21 and older near Eugene, Oregon. Kristin launched it in 2023 with a mission to help queer people reconnect with their inner child and build what she calls “wholesome community.”
Summer camp was familiar territory. Kristin had grown up attending church camp, an experience she knew she shared with many other queer people. She also knew the church had been a source of harm for many, and wanted to rewrite that story for herself and others. Returning to camp could mean experiencing it differently, with queerness welcomed at the center of the gathering.
One camper described just how meaningful that could be. She told Kristin she had grown up attending church camp at the exact campground Camp Pride uses. Coming back as a queer person, she said, was extremely healing.
There is room for plenty of play, too. A past camp Olympics brought out what Camp Pride described on Instagram as campers’ “competitive inner child spirit.” It’s an easy glimpse into the appeal of an adult summer camp, where reconnecting with a younger version of yourself can include getting very invested in winning.
The gathering Kristin calls her favorite, though, is the Land Back cookout. Camp Pride takes place over July 4 weekend, and rather than celebrate the holiday, she brings in Indigiqueer performers and hosts a fundraiser for an Indigenous organization. In 2026, she says, the camp raised $4,000 for Native Women’s Wilderness.
That commitment to giving back extends to the way she runs the business. Kristin operates on a profit-sharing model with her core team and sees paying queer people as an essential part of Camp Pride’s purpose.
“The funny thing is, it doesn’t always feel like mine,” she says. “I really try to prioritize the community above profit or vanity.”
Her accounting degree and 12 years as an auditor are part of a varied career that later took her into social media marketing. She now balances growing Camp Pride with working as a social media manager for a women- and queer-owned travel company. When she talks about the camp’s finances, her emphasis is on the opportunities that money can create.
According to the figures she shared with EveryQueer, Camp Pride paid $55,000 to staff and spent more than $10,000 hiring QTBIPOC talent in 2026. It also provided over $3,200 in scholarships, with only $1,000 in sponsorship support. Kristin describes keeping money within the queer community, aside from operating costs, as a form of mutual aid.
Sustaining that work has its challenges. Running camp often means missing chances to spend time with campers and hired talent, something Kristin finds difficult even as she gains so much from facilitating the experience. Without more financial support to hire help, expanding to additional locations would stretch the team beyond its capacity.
She has ideas for smaller gatherings that could offer other ways to connect beyond summer camp. For now, the people returning each year are a reminder of how much the existing gathering means to its community.
“I couldn’t have even imagined how many people would make this an annual tradition,” Kristin says. “It blows my mind to see people come back every summer!”
That may be the most appealing part of the summer camp do-over. What started with grieving missed experiences has become something people choose to repeat. They get to make memories as their full queer selves, then come back and do it again.
Another Camp Pride gathering is scheduled for July 1–5, 2027, near Eugene, Oregon. For information about the camp and future events, visit camp-pride.com.
Photography: Abigail Rodriguez and Maria Boutzoukas.
