Since 1982, the Orlando Sentinel has asked the community to help us recognize people who make a big difference in local lives with our Central Floridian of the Year award. For the next few weeks, we will publish features on this year\u2019s finalists. Our winner will be announced on April 11.<\/p>\n
Eddy Moratin jogged down the stairs from his second-floor office at Lift Orlando\u2019s headquarters to the lobby below, welcoming visitors with a first-name greeting and a hug.<\/p>\n
The building, with a community center and a cafe, is an extension of Moratin\u2019s work in a neighborhood he now calls home. Everyone Moratin greeted seemed happy to see the man with a contagious smile.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow\u2019s your day?\u201d they asked. \u201cHow are the kids?\u201d<\/p>\n
But a warm welcome wasn\u2019t always the case.<\/p>\n
Moratin, 52, and Lift Orlando were once an unfamiliar and unwelcome presence in the 32805 zip code of Orlando, which includes a collection of neighborhoods around Camping World Stadium, among them Holden Heights, Parramore and Washington Shores. The residents are predominately low-income, Black and Hispanic.<\/p>\n
He recalled community meetings over a decade ago where locals accused him of trying to gentrify the neighborhood or build more parking lots for the stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cI left some nights feeling like I had been sucker punched for two hours straight, and I had a hard time even making it home before falling apart, and it felt unfair,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But 13 years later, his job as president of Lift Orlando, and its work to revitalize those neighborhoods, has made him a finalist for the Orlando Sentinel\u2019s Central Floridian of the Year award.<\/p>\n
Under Moratin\u2019s leadership, Lift Orlando has developed a mixed-income housing complex, a Boys and Girls Club facility and an early learning center. It has also sponsored college scholarships and joined with Orange County Public Schools to turn a local elementary school into a K-8 charter school with more offerings for local children.<\/p>\n
The projects, Moratin said, represent\u00a0the organization\u2019s mission: \u201cStrengthening neighborhoods so people can thrive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moratin said Lift Orlando started when Steve Hogan, the CEO of Florida Citrus Sports, posed a question: \u201cHow could Orlando\u2019s football stadium be the first that was actually good for the neighborhood it sat in?\u201d<\/p>\n
Executives from several prominent Orlando businesses, including Florida Citrus Sports, AdventHealth and CNL Financial, then came together to launch the nonprofit Lift Orlando in 2013, placing Moratin at the helm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe needed somebody crazy enough to show up every day and give it a try,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Today, Lift Orlando has more than 20 employees.<\/p>\n
Moratin previously worked at Lifework Leadership, an Orlando-based Christian leadership development organization, and The Jobs Partnership of Florida, a Winter-Park based group of \u201cchurches, businesses and community organizations that uses biblical principles to help people maximize their calling at work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moratin moved with his family to Orlando from Washington, D.C. when he was 16. Now, he and his wife and their two children live in the 32805 zip code.<\/p>\n
He never went to college, instead diving into Christian ministry after graduating from Colonial High School. Moratin worked with young men escaping gangs and difficult living conditions, he said, and saw first-hand the effects of poverty on the Orlando community.<\/p>\n
Today, Moratin said his approach stems from the wisdom of Desmond Tutu, the South African bishop who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his activism against apartheid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere comes a time when you have to stop pulling people out of the river and go upstream and find out why are they falling in,\u201d Moratin said, quoting Tutu. \u201cAnd for us, neighborhood work is that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Early in his tenure as Lift Orlando\u2019s president, however, Moratin tried to pull his neighbors out of the proverbial river. But then he realized the limitations.<\/p>\n
He identified a high crime rate at the nearby apartment complex off Orange Center Boulevard, but then learned more from his conversations with community leaders, who were sure crime was a symptom of a lack of education.<\/p>\n
Moratin then met with Orange Center Elementary School\u2019s principal and learned student turnover was high because housing was unstable for many of their families, who often moved in and out of the school\u2019s attendance zone as they searched for a place they could afford.<\/p>\n
He needed to look upstream.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe realization became: There is no silver bullet. There is no one program that if we funded it really well and ran it really we\u2019d solve all these problems, because they undermine each other,\u201d Moratin said. \u201cYou have to kind of do it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
So Moratin has tried to do it all \u2014 something he said only works when philanthropy happens at such a local level.<\/p>\n
In his tenure at Lift, Moratin has partnered with outside groups in different industries to bring new resources to the neighborhood. The Heart of West Lakes Wellness Center, where Lift Orlando is headquartered, has healthcare facilities provided by Florida Blue and Community Health Centers.<\/p>\n
The local Boys and Girls Club opened in 2021 by way of a $4 million dollar donation from the Jacqueline Bradley and Clarence Otis family and other donations coordinated by Lift Orlando. It sits just across the street from the wellness center.<\/p>\n
Jamie Merrill, the president and CEO of Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Florida, called Moratin a \u201cwonderful human and a wonderful leader\u201d with a \u201cGod-given heart\u201d to make the world a better place.<\/p>\n
He is a \u201cslam dunk\u201d as a finalist for Central Floridian of the Year, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEddy is a person that makes you feel better about the world just by being around him,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Maria Vazquez, the superintendent of\u00a0OCPS, worked closely with Moratin as the district negotiated with Lift on an unusual plan: Turn Orange Center Elementary into a charter school, a public school run by a private group, with the district remaining a partner.<\/p>\n
Plans call for the new school to focus on science, engineering, math and technology and to expand to include middle school grades. The goal is for Lift Orlando to provide the school with more resources than it would get as a traditional public school.<\/p>\n
Moratin was \u201ctenacious\u201d in pushing the plans through, Vazquez said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of his greatest attributes is his ability to bring people together in order to achieve a common goal. And when you look at what he has been able to accomplish alongside his board in that community, it is amazing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Lift Orlando also helped organize scholarships, paid for by real estate developers Scott and Jennifer Boyd, to send all Jones High School graduates to Valencia College tuition-free for the next four years. The high schools sits in one of the neighborhoods the agency serves.<\/p>\n
Moratin sees Lift\u2019s mission as \u201credemptive work,\u201d a concept coined by a Christian venture capital group. The idea is that those with the financial means to make an impact should move beyond the exploitative \u201cI win, you lose\u201d model of capitalism and instead embrace an \u201cI sacrifice, we win\u201d philosophy, he said.<\/p>\n
We live in \u201ccrazy times\u201d today, he said, and things are likely to get worse before they get better.<\/p>\n
But he preaches to his children, and to his Lift Orlando team, that the world is \u201cmalleable\u201d and everything can be changed, no matter how stuck it may seem. The key, he said, is starting with low expectations but high ambitions.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever you see that seems wrong or seems unjust \u2014 that seems broken \u2014 it was probably man-made. There were probably human decisions that created that reality. And if it\u2019s man-made, it can be man-or-woman undone,\u201d Moratin said.<\/p>\n
2026 Central Floridian of the Year<\/p>\n
Finalist No. 1: Trina Gregory<\/a>
Finalist No. 2: Deborah Beidel<\/a>
Finalist No. 3: Justin Muchoney<\/a>
Today: Eddy Moratin
Sunday, April 5: Finalist No. 5 revealed
Sunday, April 12: Winner announced
More about our Central Floridian of the Year program and past winners and nominees at OrlandoSentinel.com\/CFOTY<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since 1982, the Orlando Sentinel has asked the community to help us recognize people who make a big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":215914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[45155,28,2174,266,482,1335,139,141,140,1976,1014,109,76410],"class_list":{"0":"post-215913","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-central-floridian-of-the-year","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-lake-county","11":"tag-local-news","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-orange-county","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-orlando-headlines","16":"tag-orlando-news","17":"tag-osceola-county","18":"tag-seminole-county","19":"tag-social","20":"tag-social-opinion"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/215914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}