[evangeline85]

Hi everyone,
I was advised to engage in volunteering, as an attempt to overcome my shyness. I attended to a few lessons along with other 20 people, which I did not know before, and passed an exam which allowed us to become active members of an health association.
Although advanced courses will come later, we were provided with our uniforms for service activities which consists in a long sleeves cotton polo shirt, a sweater, a water-resistant and thermal insulated outerjacket with a hidden hood and a personalised velcro name-plate, trousers and safety footwear ankle boots.

I wore it for the first time yesterday, after passing the exam, and everything was fine. I felt comfortable because my uniform is cozy and covers my body and my dull skin. We were requested to take part to our first service activity at a street stand, where our task was to educate people about correct lifestyles, helping measuring blood pressure, distributing flyers and entertaining children by allowing them to draw and paint our arms with watercolors.

I refused to take part to the activities yesterday because I was to shy and prefered to see what I would have to do these days. Then I looked at some pictures over their blog which documented this activity. It seems to be nice, however I noticed that many volunteers had taken off some parts of their uniform. I phoned to some colleagues and they said that many of them took the upper parts of the uniform off because they needed to let people learn how to measure blood pressure on their arms and entartaining activities with children required the arms to be uncovered as well.

They advised me to leave my outerjacket and my sweater in my locker when I go to these activities in public. Also they told me that one of them insisted on staying all zipped up in her full uniform until it was time to play with kids and a few little girls were expecting to use watercolors to draw her arms. She was still packed up in her uniform which however could not resist against those kids. The little girls blamed they could not draw and started unbottoning her outerjacket which in a few moments had its fastening completely opened with its buttons and zipper being wide open. Then they pulled a sleeve out of her arm and she had to take her sweater off and roll her polo shirt's sleeves to allow them to make their drawings.
She was given a post-it note with her name written to stick on her polo shirt to replace the official plate which was gone along with her outerjacket. It was not as readable as that but it was better than nothing, she said.
Now I fear to go to these activities because I really fear to show my arms and take off my nice uniform. What would you do?

[winter4me]

Why don't you want your arms to show? If it is just shyness, I would say try to let go a bit, it sounds like it could be fun.
Alternately, you could hand out the information, and ask whoever runs the volunteer group for the association if there are other, less social ways you could volunteer for a bit.

[evangeline85]

Originally Posted by winter4me

Why don't you want your arms to show? If it is just shyness, I would say try to let go a bit, it sounds like it could be fun.
Alternately, you could hand out the information, and ask whoever runs the volunteer group for the association if there are other, less social ways you could volunteer for a bit.

Because I feel I'm too thin, my skin is so dull and I feel more comfortable with my clothes protecting my body.
Anyway I read your reply when I've already been busy at my first service. We gathered at 8 am, when it was a bit cold and cloudy. At the beginning, everybody were there with their full uniforms and distributing flyers and speaking with people was our only job. Later, around 11 am, it turned to be sunny and temperature was nice. Many volunteers started taking off the upper part of their uniforms and in a few minutes many jackets and sweaters were left on the chairs.
They also offered me to get a post-it note with my name written on it to replace mine, but I prefered to keep my uniform which includes its proper plate on my jacket.
I was keeping it all zipped up to my neck and my hood was up as well. Soon after some groups of kids arrived, accompanied by their parents. So we had to make them enjoy drawing with watercolors on our arms.
I was sitting on a chair when two little girls came to me and blamed that I was too much covered making them unable to draw on my skin. Their parents said them to "strip me", because I was the only one being packed up that way. They said that it was sunny, looked at my plate and said that "Evangeline doesn't need water-protection and thermal insulation". Then one of these little girls pulled down the strings of my hood and the two started to unbutton the press studs of my outerjacket. After that, the stormflap was still covering the front zipper of the jacket but the hermetic zipper was pulled down by those whirlwinds who finally untied the inner drawsting which was the last thing keeping my jacket tied on my body.
At that point my outerjacket was wide open, still trying to cover my arms but unable to protect me like before. I could see the fastening stripped down, on the two sides of my jacket, with its drawstring, zipper and press studs completely twisted and ripped apart.
They started drawing some butterflies on my neck and when no more skin was free, they easily managed to pull out my sleeves. No fastening was preventing it from happening and my outerjacket was taken off in seconds.
My sweater came off as well as those little girls pulled it out of my trunk and I was finally asked to roll over my polo shirt's sleeves, leaving my arms uncovered.

They also detached the velcro nameplate from my outerjacket and they sticked it on my polo with tape, so they said "You still have your plate, Evangeline!".
Meanwhile my sweater and my outerjacket were abandoned under the sun, and a young woman, which was the director on yesterday, retired our brand new outerjackets and told us that we will get them back later if and when cold weather will require them to be used.