Wellspring Philanthropic
Wellspring Philanthropic is a charity organization founded by Marina Yao on 04-21-3307. It was originally formed to act as a shell company that would pay CMDRs for work done in the Lu Wu Guan system to assist The Silent Guardians. This was done in an effort to replace SDT Mercantile with The Silent Guardians as the controlling faction in the system. Marina percieved SDT Mercantile, a Corporate faction, to be exploiting the workers and people of the system, and thus sought to replace them with the Cooperative faction The Silent Guardians. The organization was originally formed as the "Lu Wu Guan Worker's Relief Fund" to reflect it's focus on the Lu Wu Guan system. After the Lu Wu Guan campaign, the organization restructured into a permeant charitable organization and changed its name to Wellspring Philanthropic on 05-15-3307. The organization operates out of Raven Tower, where it has its main offices. It currently focuses on funding humanitarian relief campaigns around disaster relief. It also continues to work at influencing faction control in a variety of systems.
Lu Wu Guan Worker's Relief Fund
On 04-21-3307 Marina Yao created the Lu Wu Guan Workers Relief Fund as a shell company that could pay diamond rewards to CMDRs for assisting The Silent Guardians in Lu Wu Guan. Marina was born in and grew up in Lu Wu Guan. She perceived SDT Mercantile, the Corporate faction in charge of the system as corrupt. It notoriously underpaid its workers and forced them to work in extremely unsafe working environments. Marina herself lost two siblings to accidents caused by SDT Mercantile negligence. The original shell company fund provided by Marina was 50,000 diamonds (Open in Discord Desktop App / Browser ). Over the course of a month, the majority of these diamonds were paid out to independent CMDRs for work done in Lu Wu Guan.
Lu Wu Guan Control War
Assisted by CMDRs, The Silent Guardians rocketed up in influence in Lu Wu Guan. On 04-27-3307, just six days after the campaign began, The Silent Guardians went to war with SDT Mercantile for control of Ortiz Moreno Hub, a Coriolis station, the largest station in Lu Wu Guan, and Marina's birthplace (Open in Discord Desktop App / Browser ). The war was fairly bloody. On the last day of war, in a desperate attempt to reduce the number of active TSG pilots, SDT instituted a polity of "Green Ship Baiting." They used weak Imperial Eagles that were green (not wanted or part of the war) to interdict TSG war ships. The war ships, being interdicted, returned fire on the manned green ships, killing the pilot and flagging the TSG ship for murder. This method of Green Ship Baiting was largely ineffective, though it did slightly reduce the effectiveness of TSG ships near the end of the war.
After five days of war, the war officially ended on 05-02-3307 with a Silent Guardian victory (Open in Discord Desktop App / Browser ). The Silent Guardians took over control of Ortiz Moreno Hub from SDT Mercantile, who were left with no controlled asset. Overall, the efforts of the Lu Wu Guan Worker's Relief Fund brought The Silent Guardians from 9.1% to 52% control in the system, and SDT Mercantile from 68.2% to 19.6% control in the system. It is still the stated goal of Wellspring to reduce SDT Mercantile to 1% control in Lu Wu Guan, but little effort has been made since reducing SDT to ~20%.
Rebranding to Wellspring Philanthropic
Lu Wu Guan served as proof to Marina that relatively little numbers of Diamonds could make big differences on the Galactic Stage. Following her success in Lu Wu Guan, Marina decided to restructure the fund into an actual permeant charity organization. Originally, the fund had 5 diplomats on staff. This was expanded to over 30 staff of a variety of disciplines during the restructuring. Marina became Wellspring's first president, and Siva Gupta, a diplomat that had worked in the Lu Wu Guan Worker's Relief Fund, was promoted by Marina to Deputy Vice President of Wellspring. Kristiina Law became head scientist, Karl Wolff became head assembler, Risto Aalmers became head engineer, and Laylah Adams became head stockbroker.
Since rebranding, Wellspring has engaged in a number of relief efforts. Most of its work has been focused on providing relief supplies, including medicine to systems suffering outbreaks and water to systems suffering drought. Wellspring has also taken an interest in Evermore. It helped provide engineers to assist in the repair of a factory in Evermore, and has made comments supporting relief efforts for the locals. After the Taki Genocide, Wellspring helped source 100 assemblers to create Arachnid Spawn Countermeasures to protect against Arachnid Spawn Grenades and other devices that utilize Spawn Spiders as a weapon.
