Lawyers work to provide foster children with the essentials.

"Something as a simple as supplying a crib can make all the difference in whether a foster child is allowed to return home," says Frances Allegra, general counsel of CHARLEE OF Dade County.

That's why the folks at CHARLEE (Children Have All Rights. Legal, Educational, Emotional) Homes for Children have had a program deliver used furniture, and household goods foster families, biological families in need of some start-up help when the court grants permission to reunify with their families, or children leaving foster care who are old enough to move to their own place.

Their warehouse program just got a major boost, thanks to a $1.1-million donation from' Office Depot. This innovative public/private partnership between corporate America and the child welfare system was celebrated in Miami March 9, with the grand opening ceremony of the CHARLEE Children's Depot that drew 350 people, including 100 from Office Depot's South Florida Corporate Headquarters.

"The opening of the CHARLEE Children's Depot is a great day for our foster children and for our community," Allegra said. "This joint project is symbolic of what can happen when the business leaders of our communities share their generosity, and expertise with worthy public causes. As government involvement recedes, the successful future for a child welfare agency today must include public-private partnerships that create new opportunities for development and stability."

What began as a U-haul and two storage bins, became a 3,000-square-foot warehouse, and is now an 8,000-square-foot warehouse, augmented by a cutting edge computer-network system, two delivery trucks and a staff who knows the needs of children's service providers in the Miami-Dade area. The new CHARLEE Children's Depot has the enhanced capacity to receive, store, and distribute new goods, which are typically unsold inventory from local warehouses, wholesalers and retailers. Besides Office Depot, major contributions have been received from Toys R Us, Hewlett Packard and several other companies supporting television talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, who has been a strong proponent of this effort.

Things got happily out of hand after O'Donnell was personally touched by a radio report about a...