FREEPORT – It all started because a 9-year-old boy wanted a better playground at his school.

Last year, Cade Rexroad was heading into his first year at Mast Landing School in Freeport when his mother, Cherie Rexroad, took him to the playground there. Cade was not impressed.

“He said it wasn’t as good (as the one at his old school, Morse Street School),” Cherie Rexroad said.

Cade, who will be a fourth-grader at Mast Landing, had a simple answer as to why he thought the school’s playground needed to be updated: “Because it’s real old and it needs new equipment, so new kids in the third grade have good equipment to play on.”

For a lot of families, the discussion would have stopped there. But the Rexroads have a drive for public service. They volunteer at the Coastal Humane Society in Brunswick, and Cherie is the founder of a group called A Tribe Called Joy, which she describes as friends who have all met online that “want to be a force for good (and) help people create their own projects and assist in any way we can.”

“What we’re looking for is to build community,” she added.

So Cade’s wish to raise money for a new playground was a good fit for A Tribe Called Joy’s first project, but the project also is getting some outside help, thanks to another family connection. Cherie’s stepson, Tom Schultheis, was a volunteer for City Year, an international youth public service program, and he spoke to a friend and fellow City Year volunteer Daniel Becton, who is originally from North Carolina, about the project.

Becton thought the Rexroads’ playground project would be a perfect way to kick off his own new public service mission, which he calls Project Ubuntu. He will spend one year traveling to each state in the country, where he will spend one week helping with a local public service project. He will be in Freeport for his first stop working with A Tribe Called Joy on the Mast Landing project from Aug. 26-31.

The project’s name comes from “ubuntu,” a philosophy found throughout the southern nations of Africa that is characterized by the notion that a person is a person through others. Becton said he came up with the idea for the project in 2010 when he was working for City Year in San Jose, Calif. He said the idea springs from his desire to help people who are helping others, not with money, but with his talents and effort.

“The more I travel around the world, the more I feel like every community has people that are dedicated to helping people in their community, and not through simply adding money to the equation, but through human effort and their time, their energy and their love required for real social change,” he said from London on Saturday, where he is wrapping up work on helping to launch City Year-London. “I’m really excited about how much good is possible and how much good I can help create.”

Becton said he has raised $16,000 for the project so far, and he has also gotten a car to use during his travels. He has projects already set up in all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., and he estimates that during the year of Project Ubuntu, he will drive about 16,000 miles, as well as fly to Alaska and Hawaii.

With a limited budget to live on, Becton said, he would be staying with the people that he is helping wherever he goes.

“(I’ll be) really relying on the kindness of other people, which is really the point of the project,” he said.

In Freeport, Cherie Rexroad said Becton and Cade would be going around to local businesses in an effort to raise money for the playground. Additionally, the group will be putting out “piggy banks” made out of old plastic bottles to collect change for the project.

There are also plans for a fundraising auction and a recycling event at the school to help raise money for the project, she said. While the dates for those events have yet to be determined, Rexroad said she would post them on A Tribe Called Joy’s Facebook page as soon as they were available. There is no timeframe as to when any new equipment might be installed at the school, as the project is still in the fundraising stage and there is no estimate yet as to what the new playground would cost.

Rexroad said she and Cade are grateful for Becton’s help in getting their project off the ground.

“(Project Ubuntu) is giving us a start and Tribe is going to continue it,” she said.

Becton said he is looking forward to working with A Tribe Called Joy.

“They are really cool, really good people that want to put action behind that love that they feel for other people and that’s what I’m after with Project Ubuntu,” he said.

Rexroad said she was proud of her son and how he has embraced the idea of the playground project.

“I try to raise him with a sense of community and a sense of giving back,” she said, adding that he has donated his birthday money to various organizations in the past. “He can do anything he wants to do and this (project) gives him his own voice.”

Cherie and Cade Rexroad will be working with Project Ubuntu in Freeport later this month to help kick off an effort to build a new playground at the Mast Landing School. (Staff photo by Mike Higgins)