Empower Queer Thriving Through Restorative Retreats

Video: let's time travel is a visual chronicle of a Cazimi Collective retreat in celebration of Fritz's golden birthday about a year ago. Along with dancing, singing and eating delicious homemade grub, we connected to our inner landscapes through a full moon ritual, self-massage workshop and a polar plunge into the Atlantic.

Hello Cazimi Collective Community!

We’re so glad you’re here :)

We are excited to be in a place where we have some tangible financial asks to support our winter and spring retreats that will support queer people (especially queer people of color) in the areas of grief, rest, recovery, creativity, strategizing, organizing and reconnecting to themselves and each other.

Over the past year, we’ve created transformative spaces for our community, hosting a variety of retreats designed for rest, play, and renewal. From community-focused full moon gatherings and queer mixers to intimate individual retreats, our work centers the needs of those who too often go unseen and unsupported.

These events provide vital opportunities for connection, healing, and celebration. With your support, we can continue to offer these spaces at no cost to participants and expand our reach to serve even more of our community. Together, we can sustain the work of care, joy, and radical belonging.

About Cazimi

A Virginia-based arts and farm retreat center for folks** to experience their most authentic life force

A retreat where you leave life as you know it at the door. You’re provided food*, shelter*, water*, and a program geared towards guiding you back to yourself. Be it through art, nurturing the biosphere and physical play, we create opportunities for healing and growth, with a change in daily life to open up possibilities individually and in community.

**While Cazimi values and welcomes all living beings, we do actively prioritize the needs of the LGBTQ+ community, with a focus on queer people of color.

*the Good kind

We encourage you to visit our website to learn more about our background.

Image: Cazimi co-hosts hobbes and Fritz watching the sunset behind a mountain landscape with their arms wrapped around each other

Funding Overview:

Direct Support for Queer, Trans, and BIPOC Communities: Funding will enhance Cazimi Collective’s capacity to provide critical support for healing and growth in the South, with a focus on marginalized communities.

Transformative Retreats: The funding will enable us to host a series of retreats for six to eight attendees (at no cost to them) addressing vital needs like grief, rest, recovery, and reconnection to self.

Targeted Retreats for Specific Communities:

QTBIPOC farmers

Palestinian American queer individuals

Exceptional, strategically under resourced participants

Individual Impact: Over the next year, we estimate that our retreats will support at least 30–40 individuals, and our events will touch hundreds, fostering connections, processing grief, and community building.

Ongoing Monthly Events: We will continue our monthly community-building events, offering accessible entry points for local queer communities in Virginia Beach and Richmond, touching even more lives.

Strengthening Organizational Infrastructure: Funding will support co-host salaries, travel stipends, and operational needs, allowing us to build a sustainable model for long-term community-centered programming.

Amplifying Impact: By providing necessary resources and supporting a flexible, community-driven approach, this funding will help us create lasting change, promote collective care, and strengthen community bonds in the South.

TOTAL GOAL: $59,140

-Fundraising Breakdown-

Annual Spring Menu:

Update 3/3/25: Based off of where we're at in our fundraising goals, we are offering these retreats at a sliding scale. Any funds gathered moving forward will go towards offering these retreats again in the future, as well as funding our ongoing operations costs. The below numbers reflect Cazimi's vision for the ways in which these retreats are community sustained moving forward.

Cazimi Collective Member Retreat

Feb 28 - Mar 2 (invite only)

This season, we’re bringing our Cazimi Collective practitioners together for an intimate retreat to dream, plan, and co-create the magic that powers our community. This space is exclusively for our dedicated members to connect deeply, align with our mission, and craft the transformative work we’ll share with the world.

By donating, you’re directly fueling the creative energy of our collective, supporting queer and POC-led initiatives, and empowering us to continue fostering spaces where authenticity and healing thrive.

Goal: $2,180

Breakdown:

$900 - Travel stipends for 4-6 collective members ($150/person round trip)

$1,200 - Food and beverage throughout retreat including catering

$80 - Covid-19 PCR tests for all participants and staff

Rest and Recovery Retreat for QTBIPOC Farmers

March 21-24 -- Applications Closed

Interested in attending when we offer this retreat again? Sign up for our email list to be the first to know when applications open.

For QTBIPOC farmers, the demands of cultivating land while navigating systemic racism, queerphobia, and the pressures of survival leave little room for rest. This retreat creates an intentional space for rest as a form of resistance and renewal, offering farmers the chance to recharge, connect, and reclaim joy.

By centering rest, we honor the radical idea that QTBIPOC farmers deserve to thrive—not just survive—and to cultivate their own well-being as deeply as they nurture the land.

6-8 attendees, 4 days/3 nights

Goal: $4,900

Breakdown:

$4,000 - Travel stipends for 8 farmers to fly to Norfolk airport or drive (up to $500/person round trip)

$800 - Food and beverage throughout retreat

$100 - Covid-19 PCR tests for all participants and staff

Grief Retreat for LGBTQ+ Palestinian Americans

April 4-7 -- Retreat Postponed, We are committed to offering grief retreats at no cost, and will provide this offering when we reach our fundraising goals.

Interested in attending when we offer this retreat in the future? Sign up for our email list to be the first to know when applications open.

The ongoing genocide in Gaza has left many queer Palestinian Americans carrying immense grief, rage, and a deep sense of displacement. This pain is compounded by navigating a queer identity alongside the erasure of Palestinian existence in the U.S. and beyond.

This grief-centered retreat will offer a vital space to process collective mourning, honor ancestral ties, and reclaim narratives of resilience. For those at the intersection of marginalized identities, creating intentional spaces to grieve and connect is an act of radical resistance—affirming their humanity and transforming grief into strength and renewal.

6-8 attendees, 4 days/3 nights

Additional staffing to co-host: Grief doula and Palestinian chef

Goal: $7,220

Breakdown:

$4,000 - We will offer up to $500 travel stipends to 8 attendees

$800 - Food and beverage throughout retreat

$120 - Covid-19 PCR tests for all participants and staff

$1,500 - Grief Doula support for entirety

$800 - Palestinian chef and/or catering support for one evening

Cazimi Vitality Retreat for LGBTQIA+

May 9-12

Interested in attending? Sign up for our email list to be the first to know when applications open.

We’re thrilled to announce the Cazimi Classic Rock Retreat, an immersive experience designed to help participants reconnect with their life force energy through a blend of rest, nourishing meals, creative skillshares, and a transformative full moon fire ceremony. This retreat offers a sanctuary for queer, trans, and POC individuals to unplug from daily life, embrace tranquility, and engage in collaborative workshops that inspire growth and authenticity. Together, we’ll share nourishing food, meaningful connections, and moments of renewal under the light of the full moon, all within the serene embrace of the Atlantic here at our temporary location in Sandbridge, VA.

6-8 attendees, 4 days/3 nights

Goal: $4,900

Breakdown:

$4,000 - Travel stipends for 8 participants to fly to Norfolk airport or drive (up to $500/person round trip)

$800 - Food and beverage throughout retreat

$100 - Covid-19 PCR tests for all participants and staff

Ongoing Events:

Virginia Beach Queer Community Building Events

Goal: $1,200

Supports VB queer community building events such as full moon ceremonies, tea times and mixers. For example, on November's full moon we hosted an arts and crafts mixer at a local brewery. This funding will allow us to provide food and beverage at some of our events, and to expand our outreach offerings like stickers and business cards so attendees can spread the word about Cazimi.

Richmond Queer Community Building Events

Goal: $1,200

Supports outreach and connection events in collaboration with Richmond-based farmers and community organizers such as a spring seed swap. This budget will cover upfront costs for merchandise, marketing materials and unexpected costs that arise along the way.

Virtual Programming

Goal: $200

Supports our annual zoom subscription to host seasonal virtual book clubs and meetups. For example, this past fall, we hosted a 4-week book club to read and discuss Don Miguel Ruiz’s "The Four Agreements."

Cazimi Operations:

Co-host Salaries

Goal: $36,000

Two co-hosts, $3,000/mo each over the course of Jan-June 2025

Supports:

Retreat planning, organization and logistics

Please note that Cazimi co-hosts (hobbes and Fritz) have been donating these services and labor to the queer community for 2+ years now. In an effort to make Cazimi a more sustainable operation, we are committed to paying ourselves a living wage of $30/hour for an average of 25 hours / week. That being said, this work is ongoing and very much full-time, as Cazimi is a lifestyle that we carry with us in our day-to-day, and we are constantly molding the evolution of the project.

On-site Covid-19 Safety Upgrades

Goal: $1,340

$300 - air purifiers for all common spaces

$40 - N95 masks in bulk

$1,000 - Emergency Fund for medical or health related emergencies on-site

Image: hobbes building a sandcastle at the beach beneath the sunset

THANK YOU FOR CONTRIBUTING TO CAZIMI COLLECTIVE!

This work is essential for us to return to our humanity and not only envision but experience the collective futures that we hope to see on a large scale. By supporting Cazimi, you’re supporting life sustaining work for those most marginalized. THANK YOU!

If you’re interested in hearing about other ways you can support us, visit our generosity page on our website. Our most urgent and ongoing need outside of this fundraiser is a new site location. While being only a block away from the Atlantic is quite astonishing for everyone that comes to Cazimi, we consider our beach location a temporary launch pad for what is to come. We’re looking for a more remote site that has room for us to grow. Specifically:

We are open to purchasing a property through crowd-funding and pooling our familial resources if it’s the right fit. However, we are ideally looking for someone to give us property that matches our criteria as a reparations offering. We are also open to an affordable lease to own agreement, if the right opportunity presents itself. If you or someone you know has a piece of property that could be a good home for Cazimi, please email us (email can be found on our website).

This is our community-funded initiative, and with it, we ask for more than just financial support—we ask for commitment to a shared vision of joy, rest, and play.

Our success is yours.

When you invest in our thriving, you're reflecting a deeper, collective investment in our daily lives. This is not just about numbers; it's about building a community that truly lives its values—not as an abstract hope, but as something tangible and actionable.

Are we only going to ask for help when we're at the brink?

Do we silence our own needs, deeming them less important than others'?

Or, perhaps the real question is:

How can we cultivate a "we" that values our lives beyond our productivity?

What if we could create a world where we invest in each other not just for survival, but for flourishing?

This fundraiser isn't just a measure of success or failure. It's an invitation to tap into something bigger—a community, a movement, a shared commitment. You might know someone who can benefit directly from this work, or you might know someone who can contribute to its continued impact. Either way, the ripple effect is real, and it begins with you.