If y’all haven’t heard about the Chaarg community and what they’re about, you should definitely make a visit to their website to learn about their mission to liberate + empower girls in their health and fitness journeys.
For the past three successful semesters, graduating senior Maren Johnson has led the CHAARG chapter at Belmont University. As an Exercise Sciences major, Maren’s passion for health, fitness, positive body image, and female empowerment to bring CHAARG to our community in the spring semester of 2016. It’s still a fairly new chapter, but absolutely thriving. Belmont CHAARG has paired with numerous fitness studios around Nashville over the past year and a half for great studio spotlights, has held several fun socials, participated in other great events such as the NEDA walk last month, and even held their very first chapter retreat last weekend at Lake Martin in Dadeville, Alabama.
Maren recently accepted a position with CHAARG as a Chapter Leadership Consultant (congrats, girl!), and with her graduating, she is passing the ambassador baton over to the lovely Grace Austin, a Corporate Communications major at Belmont. Grace served as the chapter’s Treasurer this past semester and is very excited to take on the new role to lead this amazing group of girls.
In fact, all of Exec is new this semester. There are a few members of the chapter who have previously served on Exec, but everyone at least has a completely new position for the upcoming semester. New year, new team! I had the chance to sit down with a few of the new members on Exec to talk about plans for the upcoming year.
Miss Linde LaChance is one of the two new Event Coordinators for the chapter, which entails contacting different studios around Nashville to hold events either on campus or at their studio for the girls to try out new facilities and workouts. Linde used to be a nationally competitive figure skater, but after getting a concussion had to “reevaluate her health and activity levels,” so joining CHAARG was a great way to get back into that and make friends who shared similar her values about being healthy and active and encouraging self-love. Linde is really excited to share her journey and be a part of this amazing organization and be able to help plan and organize how the next year will be for this group of girls.
Mikala Woods is the new VP of Media, which means she will be in “chaarg” (wink, wink) of all the chapter’s social media! Maintaining the social media will entail posting to Twitter three times a day, once a day to Facebook, writing posts for every “CHAARGie’s” birthday, and taking pictures at all the studio spotlights and chapter events. Mikala joined CHAARG “as a way to stay active and healthy in college,” since she always in sports growing up, as well as “be a part of an empowering group of girls.” Being a part of the Exec team, she is most excited for all the new ideas she has for the VP Media role, including more online challenges and taking more videos for Exec feature segments and “weekly wrap-ups” to share what CHAARG is all about and what they’re doing every week.
Finally, we have the wonderful new Ambassador, Grace Austen. She originally started with the founding chapter of Auburn CHAARG, and when she transferred to Belmont immediately became heavily involved in Belmont’s chapter. Initially drawn to CHAARG as a means to “exercise with others who shared similar desires for a healthy lifestyle,” she loved it enough to apply for the Treasurer position on Belmont’s Exec team during her second semester in the CHAARG community. The organization soon came to mean so much more to Grace, who values most the “encouragement and camaraderie along each others’ fitness journeys, especially with confidence in body image and feeling comfortable in your own skin.” Grace knew she wanted “to be a part of helping CHAARG reach every college girl possible so that they can experience the amazing community of support,” so she has taken steps to become Belmont’s new CHAARG Ambassador. She loves that she’s been able to get involved with all the different, incredible gyms in Nashville like GetFit615 and learning about TNB’s mission. She excited for the upcoming year, with exciting new plans to do the Ninja Warrior course with the Belmont CHAARG girls, visit an aerial yoga studio, and hold the Fall Formal and Spring Retreat again! \
There will be lots of exciting new things coming up for Belmont CHAARG, so keep your eye out, or even better, join the movement!