Working out isn’t the only thing that leads to becoming healthy and maintaining wellness. There are other important factors to consider when pursuing the goal of health. 1. Nutrition 2. Mental Health 3. Rest
Exercising isn’t the key to pursuing the lock of health. This is why groups like MSU CHAARG are striving to focus on more than just working out to ensure the health and wellness of other women in the community of Michigan State University.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Samatha Mikeshell! Sam is a senior at MSU studying supply chain management. She joined MSU CHAARG her second semester of her freshman year through the encouragement of her roommate and best friend. “Joining MSU CHAARG was the best decision of my life!!” She says that after her first semester, she fell in love with CHAARG and decided on becoming a small group coordinator (where a member of MSU CHAARG leads a small group of 5 girls in workouts every week on a particular day). But Sam’s love for MSU CHAARG didn’t stop there. “I loved the leadership experience so much, so when the Secretary position became available halfway through the semester, I jumped at it!!” Sam loved her time working with the exec team and appreciated the experience. After taking on the position of Secretary for MSU CHAARG, her junior year Sam became the ambassador and has been ever since! “I have developed so well over over the past three and a half years and I am so sad to be having to graduate and leave MSU CHAARG, but I know it [MSU CHAARG] will always be a part of my life and I am so excited to see what is accomplished in the future.”
1. What is the goal for MSU CHAARG when it comes to helping other women? Our mission on-campus is to provide a safe space for women. Though MSU CHAARG is mainly affiliated with being a workout group to most people, we’re more than just a workout group! We’re really trying to provide a space for women on-campus to feel like themselves. A welcoming space to feel accepted and a safe space where they can grow physically and mentally, surrounded by a group of other women: who share similar goals.
2. For someone who doesn’t know what CHAARG is, how would you explain the organization? CHAARG is a community on-campus full of amazing women who are there to help and empower one another. People think that CHAARG is solely a workout group and year we do work out. But, we also make sure that we incorporate those other elements of wellness, spirituality and mental health on top of physical health. Mental and spiritual are important factors that the club wants to incorporate.
3. What are the biggest problems that MSU CHAARG has seen when it comes to women’s health? The exec team and I have seen a lot of negativity being associated with nutrition. I believe that is one of our biggest problems. We have a lot of women coming in and they have very unhealthy eating habits. It is so sad and they don’t know better obviously, so I guess our goal is to push them in the right direction by providing them the proper resources. For example, eating is not about counting calories or skipping meals to have a certain appearance. I believe that the biggest issue is how social media is pertaining to a particular image of health and wellness. It has a big effect on college-age girls who see the images. Some of the images aren’t very sustainable for health and promote the right image. It is hard to tell someone that their perspective on health is wrong and trying to change old habits, but the best thing we can do is provide the resources on how to eat right.
4. What contributions has or can MSU CHAARG do to encourage or provide women who are struggling with personal or mental health?
Yes, I think that a huge one is mental health. Especially now that mental health is being advocated and has become more of a taboo topic, which is awesome it should be talked about more. The nation has changed in the perspective of mental health, which is so helpful. We are currently providing members with a mental health resource guide. We have wellness events throughout the semester and socials that promote the brand of mental health. We provide resources at the socials as well and through the newsletters that get sent out every week. There’s always room to grow in that space [mental health] and I think working with other clubs, the big one being the MSU Mental Health Services, are beneficial as well. Yeah but definitely providing those resources is a great step and we are always working more to provide better ways to help other women with mental health.
5. How do you see MSU CHAARG making an impact in the community? Yeah, I believe this is something we have been working on this past year. For the whole entire East Lansing Community. We have the Diversity&Inclusion Committee (which tries to do two volunteer events within the year) that works with other groups within the MSU community but also stands for the community as a whole. CHAARG is a collage-based organization that should be able to provide more for the community. We are able to take what we do and be able to give those values and morals back to the community. The community has an impact on the organization. For example in the past we have worked with Empower, which is a mentorship group; girls within CHAARG have volunteered to lead a group of girls. Showing the girls the ropes, helps the girls build valuable leadership skills and just being able to help the brand with their message.
6. What work would you like to continue with MSU CHAARG? We are a pretty established chapter, but our biggest mission is to reach out to more women across campus. We have about 200 to 300 active members within the organization and there is always more room to grow within those numbers. Michigan State is a big college campus and there is a large community of women within the community, so being able to recruit more women would be amazing! We want to be a more inclusion and diverse group as the majority of our members white straight females. We want to make our space available and welcoming to everyone on-campus. I believe that people with disabilities should also be included within CHAARG, which is why we are working with organizations on-campus to empower other women who come from different backgrounds by providing them a space within CHAARG.
7. Have women been personally affected in a positive or negative way by joining the MSU CHAARG community? I have mainly been hearing positive things in regards to members joining CHAARG, especially in regards to how people who have joined CHAARG have changed a lot since freshman or sophomore year in being confident and leadership skills. It is overwhelming when you first join CHAARG, because you walk into Jension and there are 200-300 women all together working out as a group. People who join CHAARG gain important skills such as confidence and leadership. Our mission is to really develop women with a sense of health and wellness and of course helping them develop healthy eating habits. Of course we also know that everybody is different when it comes to wellness and everyone develops differently which is why we do our best to make everyone feel inclusive and provide helpful material that can be used by everyone. I think a lot of girls are able to find that, I know personally for myself, that CHAARG has impacted me a lor and I have learned so much through the organization about healthy habits. I’ve also been surrounded by an amazing community of women that has been so awesome! I want to continue that energy, to all of our members, giving them that positive feel.
8. Say a woman came to you who was struggling with mental health or an eating disorder what steps would be taken to help this woman? That is not something that is uncommon. The first thing we do is obviously send them to those resources, we are not certified to help, but we can point them to the correct resources to help them. I think first and foremost we should be there for them and provide them with those resources. Then we make sure we are always there for them, by following up with them and creating a relationship of a friend to lean on. I know if it was something we found worrisome we would contact the correct people to ensure their health.
9. What do you think is the biggest problem facing women when it comes to health and wellness? I think when girls come in as freshmen they have skewed ideas of what health and wellness is., especially when looking at things such as social media. I think social media is one of the worst parts of being an adult in college, particularly that of being in your twenties. Social media doesn’t show the whole picture and you get this type of ideal body image that isn’t your correct body image. Social media can destroy a woman’s confidence in regards to how she feels about her body, especially when she sees images that are pushing her to an unsustainable image (because that is not normally healthy). I think CHAARG is a huge factor in providing young women what is truly considered health and wellness. For example educating women that outing calories is the wrong perspective on eating healthy. I said earlier like health and wellness is not a one-size-fits-all type, every person is different so our job is to introduce the ideals of what is health and wellness. Everyone is on a different journey and everyone takes different steps into how they get on that journey which is why CHAARG does it best to provide the starting pack to help women on their own individual journeys.
10. What is the Diversity&Inclusion community and what role does it play in helping CHAARG? Creating more of a diverse and inclusion space on-camus and a community at the same time. We are working on partnering with more organizations and clubs. Our biggest goal is to be more inclusive to the mass number of people on-campus because some workouts are not for everyone and inform our instructors to provide an alternative workout for their workout plan to make so that everyone is able to do the workout. We are just trying to be more welcoming and inclusive to different groups.
11. What is the future for MSU CHAARG when it comes to women’s health? I believe our goal should be to continue recruiting more women to join CHAARG who are on campus. I think I could benefit from this welcoming space and I think being there for people as a shoulder to lean on is also a good way to look forward to what CHAARG can do. We definitely want to grow more in the diversity&inclusion committee and being able to reach out more to the East Lansing committee. In addition, spread our message to ensure that if women need help with and want to talk more about health and wellness we can provide them with the proper resources to help them on their journey.
Additional Resources: If you want to learn more about CHAARG, visiting their the MSU CHAARG instagram or go to the official CHAARG website: https://chaarg.com/
If you want to learn more about the MSU CHAARG chapter follow this link: https://chaarg.com/michigan-state-university/
If you wish to become a member of MSU CHAARG, follow this link: https://shop.chaarg.com/products/michigan-state-university-spring-membership