Strawberry season is upon us, which means baskets of ripe succulent fruit are out there on the farms, waiting to be picked. It also means Becky Young's pound cakes and strawberry pies are on sale at Jean's Berry Patch in Apex.

Paying $22 for a butter pound cake and $10 for a fresh frozen strawberry pie may be a splurge, but it's for a cause. Sales of the cakes and pies help Young, 50, of Raleigh, travel to South Africa, usually twice a year, to further efforts to build a permanent orphanage for about 250 abused or abandoned children. Right now, Young says, the children are living in a church in a converted warehouse and with a grandmother known for taking in orphans.

These bake sales started in 1999, a year after Young's first trip to South Africa with a church missionary to help the orphans. Since then, Young has started a nonprofit, the Mabopane Foundation, which is named for the area where the orphans live. She holds monthly yard sales in the Olive Chapel crossroads community to raise money for the orphans and the orphanage effort.

During this time of year, Young's kitchen is completely rearranged to pump out an estimated 280 butter pound cakes and 180 fresh frozen strawberry pies. Her pantry is filled with ingredients bought in bulk, like 25-pound bags of sugar and flour. Jean Copeland of Jean's Berry Patch on N.C. 751 donates all the strawberries. Friends show up to help bake or cut berries.

Ask Young what spurs this monumental baking effort, she will tell you the children do: "They are the ones that inspired me." She then goes on to mention Michael, one of the first children to come off the streets. Michael, she says, just graduated with a double engineering degree from a college in Cape Town.