- November 15, 1997, was when it all started. An old friend had given one of our founders a free pass to attend the third year of Anime Weekend Atlanta. She recalls: “That Saturday night at the dance, a member of our merry band of misfits sprained his ankle pogo-dancing.” She wrapped and iced the ankle, and a department was born.
- By 2002, we were busy enough that we could justify bringing in more medically trained crew and housing them onsite, so we became “AWA Medical.” Our first members were all part of the GA-3 DMAT (Disaster Medical Assistance Team), but when Hurricane Rita hit in 2005, the GA-3 DMAT team was almost deployed to Texas. The founder was *this close* to working AWA by themselves. So, we began to cast our net wider for volunteers.
- AWA Medical became “Bunnies Without Borders” in 2014.
- In 2016, we hit a wall: we were required by a venue to obtain an insurance policy for the entire department, instead of just relying on our own individual liability policies. But the annual cost of that policy for a 25-member team was more than our annual budget had ever been.
- In 2017, we spun off as Usagi Medical Group (Usagi is Japanese for “rabbit.”) We began talking to other conventions within a 500-mile radius of Atlanta with whom to partner. Today, we work with close to 40+ certified and credentialed volunteers.