Service work in the local community is a great way to get the personal energy immersed and a way to spread positive energies indeed.
Not sure what you meant by " fall into that trap" in context to my statement. Curious to hear your input on that.
To learn more about me you can go through my post history to see more details. But I'll give a bit of current works and background.
My family are multi generational homesteaders in Hawaii. We are all organic and grow coffee as our primary crop. We also have acres of permaculture based, year round producing edible food forests. We grow close to 90% of our vegetables and fruits (including cacao for chocolate) from heirloom cultivars. We hunt, fish, gather from the land and sea sustainably We save seeds and share the seeds/ plants freely with anyone interested in self sufficiency and community sustainability.
We literally give the sustainability away. I personally plant hundreds of seeds monthly for our booth at the farmers market and other community projects. Make cuttings and use air layering methods to reproduce needed trees.
We use a pay it forward business model. We accept donations, barter and give away these plants for free. This empowers our local community to try gardening, or new plants and assist in learning how to care for the plants as well.
We volunteer often, organize and host community events such as beach clean ups and movie nights. We work with the food bank taking weekly collected items to them. We create events to sponsor children in need, like shoe collections for school kids twice a year. We also created a local auction for children in the make a wish foundation. We do not raise the funds for make a wish but directly pay the monies earned toward that specific child's wish. Therefor eliminating the cuts in direct funding to the children's wishes.
My list could go and on. My family and I do what we can when we can, however we can. We gave up our "normal lives" to live simply and give back. We believe in the spirit of Aloha. And without ALOHA, we feel there's not much else to achieve.