UVM’s newest health and wellness club, CHAARG, aims to serve as a space for women establishing healthy lifestyles, said Club President Amanda Reinert, a first-year.

Changing Health Attitudes and Actions to Recreate Girls received SGA recognition at a Jan. 24 meeting.

“We hope to cultivate a strong community of women supporting each other and creating healthy and happy lifestyles,” Reinert said. 

CHAARG is a nationwide organization that has chapters at over 115 universities, according to its website. 

The club’s mission is to “liberate girls from the elliptical + proving the fitness can [+ should!] be fun,” and that working out is better with friends, according to its website.

Reinert’s decision to establish UVM’s chapter of CHAARG stemmed from her sister’s positive experience with the organization, she said.

“My sister is on the executive team at UMass [Amherst] and it was an incredible experience for her,” Reinert said. “I really wanted to bring that over here to UVM.”

The club will have socials and workshops focusing on wellness topics, such as healthy eating and mindfulness, and will host professional wellness instruction from the Burlington area, Reinert said. The club will also take advantage of fitness facilities in Burlington, such as REV Indoor Cycling on Pine Street.

“Right now we’re just reaching out to people and seeing who would be willing to work with us,” she said. “We’ve been talking to Artemis Fitness, we’ve been talking with a bunch of instructors from Campus Rec, self defense workshops—a bunch of fun stuff. We’ve got a really, really cool schedule lined up.”

Members of CHAARG pay dues to the organization, and the cost of attending workshops and professional instruction is included in CHAARG’s member dues, Reinert said.

“We have [dues] set to the lowest amount that we can possibly have, but once our members buy the membership, then they get access to all of our weekly workouts, all of our social events and all of our workshops throughout the semester,” she said.

Reinert said that typical group meetings will take the form of weekly workouts, small group workouts and time where members of the executive team host meetings for members to hang out together.

“Sometimes they get together to work out, sometimes they get together just to have a study day or go grab coffee,” she said.

Reinert said the UVM chapter of CHAARG plans to expand using social media.

“The biggest thing that we learned is that social media is our best friend,” she said. “We really just get on Instagram and we find a bunch of people that seem like they would be interested in CHAARG, and we follow [and] DM them.”

CHAARG will also offer free workouts for those interested, Reinert said.

“We have sample workouts throughout the semester, which are just free workouts where anybody can come so people bring their friends, […] once they see what we’re all about, and they really get the vibe, then I think we’ll get a lot of people.”

First-year Grace Dusenberry said she is excited to take the exercise classes CHAARG offers and use the opportunity to meet people.

“I thought it would be a good way to get out and just to improve my fitness and socialization in general,” she said.

CHAARG will hold its first sample workout in Living Well on Feb. 1 at 7 p.m., Reinert said.