LIFT Orlando

HEALTH & WELLNESS: Lift Orlando works to provide a mix of high-quality facilities, programs, and services that enhance health, quality of life, and increase overall life expectancy. Lift is the sponsor of The Heart of West Lakes Wellness Center, developed and operated by West Lakes HWC, Inc. The Heart will be a resident-focused center, designed to strengthen the community by providing convenient access to holistic health, financial, and lifestyle services under one roof. The two-story facility will be a space for residents to connect, learn, and thrive, and will feature first-class amenities paired with decor that pays homage to the community's rich history. Additionally, Lift Orlando engaged in relationship building with key health and wellness partners, Florida Blue and Community Health Centers, in an effort to bridge the gap between these vital healthcare service providers and West Lakes residents. Grants to West Lakes, HWC totaled $1.2MM. In addition, Lift supported community engagement efforts such as the West Lakes Community Clean-Up, which facilitated a clean-up effort involving four communities and provided funding for three Lake Lorna Doone Park movie nights, gathering approximately 50 families.

EDUCATION: Lift Orlando's Cradle-to-Career goal is to support a high performing educational pathway beginning with early childhood all the way to promising careers. Lift Orlando supports the educational pathway by engaging community members and coordinating alignment between the community schools, community members and best in class not-for-profits, while measuring and evaluating progress towards our shared goals. Throughout 2022, Lift Orlando's Director of Education met with West Lakes' parents, guardians, teachers, and administrators at local schools, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida, and potential programmatic partners. Based on these conversations, an education strategic plan was developed which focused on literacy and STEM education, as well as wraparound support for education providers, teachers, and families. Lift continued to provide funding toward teacher appreciation at the Jacqueline Bradley & Clarence Otis Boys & Girls Club, Jones High School, Legends Academy, Orange Center Elementary School, and the West Lakes Early Learning Center. Lift Orlando also continued its support of the West Lakes Early Learning Center (ELC) by participating in fundraising, community engagement and programmatic partner coordination. The ELC provides high quality and affordable early childhood education for the children of West Lakes. As of July 2022, the ELC provided 116 comprehensive speech opportunities including speech and language, ABA therapy, occupational therapy and more; 321 patients were seen in the ELC's onsite pediatric clinic serviced by Lift partner and Heart healthcare provider Community Health Centers (CHC). Lift's Education team also completed research and discovery of the current state of neighborhood Early Learning Centers, built relationships with 16 ELCs, and created and delivered gift baskets to childcare providers. In 2022, Lift Orlando formed a partnership with Legends Academy to train up to six teachers in the Orton-Gillingham approach to reading instruction and implement the approach in the teachers' classrooms, as well as provide wraparound support focused on literacy education for teachers, administrative staff, students, parents, and guardians. Lift additionally worked to develop a renewed and stronger partnership with Orange Center Elementary. Lift continued working with The Jacqueline Bradley & Clarence Otis Family Branch Boys & Girls Club. The Club holds after-school programming and summer camps, and serves up to 150 children ages 6 to 18 years. During the summer of 2022, Lift Orlando provided transportation to and from summer camp field trips for students at the Boys & Girls Club for 250 attendees. Lift additionally provided tickets to SeaWorld for Club participants. Lift also provided a grant to Polis Institute to cover West Lakes residents' participation in MVP Strong Families. MVP Strong Families served 116 people from the Communities of West Lakes, providing year-round programming that supports families with a two-generation approach through developmental relationship building and family wrap-around support services.

COMMUNITY QUARTERBACK: As the Community Quarterback in West Lakes' Collective Impact Initiative, Lift Orlando helps to facilitate and coordinate open collaboration between residents, nonprofit partners, businesses, and community leaders, who are collectively working to strengthen The Communities of West Lakes and 32805 ZIP code. In order to monitor and evaluate how Lift and its partners are impacting the community, Lift engages Polis Institute to track and monitor impacts as well as execute a door-to-door survey to collect feedback from West Lakes residents on how they feel about the changes in their community and gather information on specific topics such as health, economic viability, education, etc. Polis recruited, trained, and managed the community surveyors, who were hired from the community. The survey teams made 3,471 attempts to engage eligible households within West Lakes to participate in the survey. A total of 433 residents participated. Of participating residents, 77.1% felt positive about neighborhood changes. Lift Orlando collaborates with and provides funding to West Lakes Partnership (WLP) to pursue projects that increase the wealth and well-being of West Lakes residents. Alongside the Residential Paint & Beautification Program, Community Clean-Up and Dream Housing Rehab Program, WLP issues "The West Lakes Newsletter", with 21,853 individuals opened and viewed e-newsletters and 6,553 physical newsletters delivered to residents in 2022. In 2022, Lift created the Art for the Heart Advisory Committee. This committee is composed of West Lakes residents and Lift staff with a mission to display culturally relevant, aesthetically pleasing, and legacy honoring artwork within the facilities located on the West Lakes Community Campus. Lift also held quarterly resident Lunch and Learns that brought together West Lakes' homeowners' association (HOA) leaders, community partners, and local policy makers in conversation on specific topics. This series provided a space for resident leaders to discuss local challenges and work towards solutions with help from the policy makers and Lift Orlando.

Economic viability

Housing