We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Elizabeth Duhig. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Elizabeth below.
Elizabeth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, folks often look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight – but that often obscures all the nitty, gritty details of everything that went into the growth phase of your business. We’d love to hear about your scaling story and how you scaled up?
In the beginning, The Ground Up Project was just me. Over time though, I scaled up by learning how to delegate tasks and trust others. At first, I wanted to do everything myself because I was scared that if I gave any task to others, something would go wrong. However, through working on my ability to trust others, I realized that so much more could be achieved if I learned to ask for help. With this realization in mind, I asked my current vice president, Amanda, if she could help. I didn’t know what I needed help with, so she stepped in and made The Ground Up Project a website and business cards. Now, she is in charge of updating the website when needed and creating posters for upcoming events and drives. After Amanda joined, I began to search for other staff members to help me drive donations to charities, gather donations, and volunteer at events. I asked if anyone was interested in joining The Ground Up Project’s staff team, and I were met with a flood of people who wanted to help my cause. This led to events that were a lot bigger and more successful than before. An example of this was a book sorting event after a book drive The Ground Up Project hosted in June and July 2024. Nine people volunteered to help sort through books to donate to various charities. Instead of it taking multiple hours if I sorted through it myself, it only took one hour. Now, I have a staff team of about five people and a network of volunteers willing to help whenever needed, to which I will always be grateful for.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
The Ground Up Project is a humanitarian project that focuses on using surplus items to aid people with the high living costs of San Diego, as well as other humanitarian crises. Our donations come from the surplus of others, which we divert from the waste stream. Even with things we cannot donate such as torn clothes, we find ways to recycle them in order to minimize waste output. An example of this is donating clothing to textile recycling centers. As of December 2024, The Ground Up Project has donated 3,800 pounds of items such as food, clothing, bags, artwork, hygienic products, books, shoes, and toys. This widespread distribution of donations ensures that we are not only diverting as many items from the stream as possible but also widening our horizons to help people in a multifaceted way. We gather these donations by hosting different drives and events. An example of this is a statewide clothing drive done in February 2024, that we co-hosted with a high school club in the bay area called Minorities in Politics, and another humanitarian project in LA called Your Narrative. Another example of this done locally is an annual food drive that The Ground Up Project does with various school clubs at my school. This annual food drive has been done twice now and has raised an average of 1100 pounds of food a year. The Ground Up Project also aims to donate internationally. We host different events and drives in order to engage the community on these international endeavors. An example of this was when The Ground Up Project hosted an event to collect and package a donation box that would be sent to a charity in Vietnam called Blue Dragon. Blue Dragon is an organization that finds and rescues people from human trafficking. The donation box included bedding, toys, hygienic products, and Vietnamese educational books. So far, The Ground Up Project has donated to Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Mexico. As The Ground Up project grows, we hope to expand our global outreach, further in order to help even more people.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
In my early childhood, I always wanted to ease people’s suffering. Whether that was helping a friend who fell on the playground, or sharing a lunch with someone who didn’t have one. I didn’t like seeing other people sad! This led me to ask why we could not help the homeless people on the streets. I was told that homeless people existed because they were ‘too lazy’. This ingrained a stigma into my brain that homeless people were inherently lazy. It wasn’t until high school that this perspective was changed. During my cross-country season in my freshman year, I would see homeless people on a route I frequently ran. Before this, I never had the chance to see any homeless person up close because I was always pulled away from them due to them being deemed as ‘dangerous’. The truth is, the people I saw were not dangerous. These were people who were suffering. This realization was extremely eye-opening, as my learned stigma was shattered. Soon after, I delved into research about the causes of homelessness and found that anyone can be homeless at any time. Natural disasters, debt, or mental illness. These are only a handful of the reasons why someone could become homeless. The research I did online allowed me to unlearn the stigma and realize the complexity of the homelessness crisis in San Diego.
I became upset at the stigma that I had learned. At the time, this stigma was so normalized in society that there was no problem simply accepting that stigma as truth. The people who are homeless are most likely at one of the roughest points in their lives. Why does society turn their backs on people in these situations when they need us the most? I unlearned the generalization and stigmatization of homeless people. They are not dangerous. They are not lazy. Chances are, they are suffering. The people in this situation are deserving of empathy, just as anyone else is. Now that I have shaken off the stigma of homeless people I want to shake the stigmatized perspective off others too.
Any advice for managing a team?
As the founder and president of The Ground Up Project, I manage a team of high schoolers and college students. Because of this younger audience, my method of keeping high morale and managing a team is simply being authentic. What I mean by that is to not act like a robot who is only there to give orders. As a leader, showing kindness, compassion, and empathy to others is paramount to a successful team. This is because it shows that you care for your team as people, not just workers. Doing kind things for them to show that they are appreciated, such as making food for them at events, is something that goes a long way. At any event I host, I always ensure that my volunteers are fed to show that I care for them and appreciate what they do. Being authentic and connected with your team is extremely important in maintaining high morale. With high morale, managing a team comes quite easily. Since I run a relatively small team, I delegate tasks to everyone, and if someone is finished early, they help out anyone who seems to be falling behind. Overall, I care about my staff members and volunteers very deeply because they are one of the most important parts of The Ground Up Project, so as a leader, I show my appreciation through kindness.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tgupsd.org/
- Instagram: @thegroundupprojectsd
