It’s easily the worst moment of the day when a hungry child comes to her for food and there is nothing to give.

“It’s horrible,” says Christine De Vries, the secretary of Ecole North Oyster Elementary, a rural French-English school near Ladysmith.

“Yesterday I told a child she was getting the last apple. I had nothing for the other kids who were hungry. I just don’t ever want to be in this state.”

So De Vries has applied to The Vancouver Sun’s Adopt-A-School campaign for help.