In the Beginning

Back in 2013, our fearless leader, Gina Gareau-Clark (a cosplayer at heart), came up with a wonderful idea to give back to her community through cosplay. She, along with a group of our very first cosplay volunteers, arranged a visit to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta to bring about smiles and joys to the children experiencing hardship and illness. Realizing the importance of the act of giving back to the community, she formed Cosplay Volunteers of Atlanta.

In an article written by Gina about the creation process, she states:

“I started Cosplay Volunteers of Atlanta in June of 2013 as an experiment with a handful of faithful friends. I had an increasing amount of support for special needs children from the cosplay community with an increasing amount of need for volunteers for children’s events. My two worlds collided and Cosplay Volunteers of Atlanta was born!“

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You can read more about Gina’s experience as well as those of many of our veteran volunteers in her article:

https://craftergeek.com/2016/10/26/cosplay-vounteers-of-atlanta/

Thanks to Gina, we’ve had the privilege of working with many different organizations; Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, The United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, The Down Syndrome Association of Atlanta, Home of Hope, and The Make a Wish Foundation are just some of them! While CVoA has undergone many iterations in the past, it still, at its heart, remains an organization devoted to making children smile. It's not exactly Disney World or Universal, but we call it our personal way of bringing magic into the world one smile at a time.