Making the world a more hygienic, sustainable, and equitable place
It should be noted that the Principle of Life we refer to as What Goes Around Comes Around works both ways! Yes, in this blog we often point out the folly that some people allow themselves to perpetrate, which ends up with regrettable consequences because of it. In many cases it is due to ignorance that there is such a universal law of nature and human experience, that actually does responds in kind to our thoughts, words and actions.
Call it What Goes Around Comes Around, or The Law of Cause & Effect or Karma, they all mean the same thing.
It suggests that from what we now know, a lot of good will likely flow back to Navjot Swanky for using his creative genius for something to benefit mankind. We don’t know yet how great those rewards will be, but based on preliminary info, it is at the very least promising!
Navjot is creating very good Karma with his positive contributions to life. Hopefully, the lion’s share of his thoughts, words & actions are reflective of these. If so he have a lot of good to look forward to:
Meet the Engineer Creating Off-Grid Manual Washing Machines That Empower Low-Income Communities
Find Rob’s book & ebook “What Goes Around Comes Around – A Guide To How Life REALLY Works” at Amazon or Audible
Kirkus Reviews says:
A stable, nonpreachy, objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre. A successful guide that uses anecdotes of real human experiences to reveal powerful truths about life.
Meet the Engineer Creating Off-Grid Manual Washing Machines That Empower Low-Income Communities
Navjot Sawhney — the creator of a hand-cranked washing machine designed for low-income communities — is being recognized for making the world a more hygienic, sustainable, and equitable place.
On January 26, Sawhney received the Points of Light Award from U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. This award honors outstanding volunteers and inspirational changemakers, and Sawhney is one of fewer than 2,000 winners.
“It’s absolutely phenomenal. It’s testament to all the hard work the volunteers are doing at the moment,” he told the BBC.
A snippet of a letter from the Prime Minister to Sawhney for the award was shared via The Washing Machine Project’s Instagram, reading: “Your innovative, hand-cranked washing machines are giving families the dignity of clean clothes and the time you are saving them is empowering many women who have been held back from education and employment.”

The idea for an energy-efficient, manual washing machine originated after he quit his job at Dyson to volunteer with Engineers WIthout Borders U.K. in India. He noticed a neighbor struggling to do the laundry and realized that women were disproportionately responsible for carrying out the time-consuming task.
“Handwashing clothes is crippling and back-breaking in rural areas as women carry water from ponds. I spoke to women, they felt they couldn’t afford electric washing machines. That’s when the penny dropped,” he said in an interview with the Global Indian.

So with a background in engineering and humanitarianism and a vision for a better way to wash, he founded the social enterprise The Washing Machine Project in 2019— and named the first product Divya, after his neighbor who inspired it all.
Sawhney’s off-grid washing machines are unique for how they operate — without electricity and with less time and water than traditional machines — and for how they can empower low-income and displaced communities.
The Washing Machine Project states that 70% of the world’s population lacks access to a proper washing machine. These machines offer people “the dignity of clean clothes,” along with a chance to get some time back in their days.

Sawhney told the BBC that he estimates about 300 machines have been given out worldwide: everywhere from schools and orphanages to refugee camps and humanitarian aid centers in Poland for Ukrainian refugees. And as energy bills rise, these machines are increasingly being sought after and put to use in the U.K. and USA — including Texas, where the team has been washing clothes this month for people without housing.
Looking ahead, Sawhney has high hopes for the potential positive impacts of his invention. “My short-term goal is to positively impact 100,000 people, saving over 1 million liters of water through The Washing Machine Project,” he wrote in a University of Bath essay, adding, “We want to become an innovation hub for the humanitarian world. They don’t need 500- [pound] vacuum cleaners. They need lights. They need to be given time to prosper.”
Kirkus Reviews, the gold-standard for independent & accurate reviews, has this to say about
What Goes Around Comes Around:
A successful guide that uses anecdotes to reveal powerful truths about life.
The stable, positive, non-preachy and objective voice makes the book stand apart from others in the genre.
~ Kirkus Reviews
“I’ve read a number of books that focus on sharing a similar message, including “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne, “The Answer” by John Assaraf & Murray Smith, “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield, “Think and Grow Rich,” by Napoleon Hill, and I must say that I find Rob’s to be my favorite.” – Sheryl Woodhouse, founder of Livelihood Matters LLC
Making the world a more hygienic, sustainable, and equitable place
Making the world a more hygienic, sustainable, and equitable place
New research shows small gestures matter even more than we may think.
Colombo Family Crime Boss and 12 Others Are Arrested, Prosecutors Say
An indictment unsealed on Tuesday accuses the organization of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort a labor union.
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien
For two decades, the leadership of the Colombo crime family extorted a Queens labor union, federal prosecutors said — an effort that continued unabated even as members of the mob clan cycled through prison, the family’s notorious longtime boss died, and as federal law enforcement closed in.
Over time, what began as a Colombo captain’s shakedown of a union leader, complete with expletive-laced threats of violence, expanded into a cottage industry, prosecutors said, as the Colombo organization assumed control of contracting and union business, with side operations in phony construction certificates, marijuana trafficking and loan-sharking.
On Tuesday, 11 reputed members and associates of the Colombo crime family, including the mob clan’s entire leadership, were charged in a labor racketeering case brought by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn.
All but two of the men were arrested Tuesday morning across New York and New Jersey, prosecutors said. Another was surrendered to the authorities on Tuesday; another defendant, identified as the family consigliere, remained at large, prosecutors said.
The indictment accuses the Colombo family of orchestrating a two-decade scheme to extort an unnamed labor union that represented construction workers, using threats of violence to secure payments and arrange contracts that would benefit the crime family.
The charges are an ambitious effort by the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take down one of the city’s five Mafia families. In addition to the union extortion scheme, which is the heart of the racketeering charge, the indictment charges several misdeeds often associated with the mob, including drug trafficking, money laundering, loan-sharking and falsifying federal labor safety paperwork.
Detention hearings for the defendants in Brooklyn federal court continued into the evening Tuesday, as they entered not-guilty pleas to the charges; prosecutors had asked the court to keep 10 of the defendants in custody.
“Everything we allege in this investigation proves history does indeed repeat itself,” Michael J. Driscoll, F.B.I. assistant director-in-charge, said in a statement. “The underbelly of the crime families in New York City is alive and well.”
Around 2001, prosecutors said, Vincent Ricciardo — a reported captain in the family, also known as “Vinny Unions” — began to demand a portion of a senior labor union official’s salary. When Mr. Ricciardo was convicted and imprisoned on federal racketeering charges in the mid-2000s, prosecutors said, his cousin continued to collect those payments.
Starting in late 2019, prosecutors said, the senior leadership of the Colombo family became directly involved in the shakedown, which extended to broader efforts to siphon money from the union: for example, manipulating the selection of union health fund vendors to contract with entities connected to the family, and diverting more than $10,000 each month from the fund to the family.
Andrew Russo, 87, who prosecutors describe as the family boss, is accused of taking part in those efforts, as well as a money-laundering scheme to send the proceeds of the union extortion through intermediaries to Colombo associates. He was among nine defendants charged with racketeering.
Mr. Russo appeared in court virtually from the hospital Tuesday; he is set to be detained upon his release, pending a future bail hearing.
The family’s infamous longtime boss, Carmine J. Persico, died in federal custody in North Carolina in March 2019.
Federal law enforcement learned of the extortion scheme about a year ago, prosecutors wrote in a court filing Tuesday; investigators gathered thousands of hours of wiretapped calls and conversations recorded by a confidential witness, wrote the prosecutors, who also described law-enforcement surveillance of meetings among the accused conspirators.
The authorities said they repeatedly captured Mr. Ricciardo and his associates threatening to kill the union official. “I’ll put him in the ground right in front of his wife and kids,” Mr. Ricciardo was recorded saying in June.
On another occasion cited by prosecutors in the memo seeking his detention, Mr. Ricciardo directed the union official to hire a consultant selected by the Colombo family, saying: “It’s my union and that’s it.” Prosecutors said his activities were overseen by a Colombo soldier and the consigliere who remains at large.
Much of the activity outlined in the indictment took place while the defendants were either in prison or on supervised release for prior federal mob-related convictions. Theodore Persico Jr., described as a family captain and soldier, was released from federal prison in 2020 and, despite a directive not to associate with members of organized crime, “directed much of the labor racketeering scheme,” prosecutors said.
Mr. Persico, 58, is set to inherit the role of boss after Mr. Russo, prosecutors wrote.
Several of the defendants were named in what prosecutors described as a fraudulent safety training scheme, in which they falsified state and federal paperwork that is required for construction workers to show they have completed safety training courses.
One of the defendants, John Ragano — whom prosecutors say is a soldier in the Bonanno crime family — is accused of setting up phony occupational safety training schools in New York, which prosecutors said were “mills” that provided fraudulent safety training certificates to hundreds of people.
In October 2020, prosecutors said, an undercover law enforcement officer visited one of the schools in Ozone Park, Queens, and received, from Mr. Ricciardo’s cousin, a blank test form and an answer sheet; weeks later, the agent returned to pick up his federal safety card and paid $500.
The purported schools were also used for meetings with members of La Cosa Nostra — the group of crime families commonly known as the Mafia — and to store illegal drugs and fireworks, according to the indictment.
Mr. Ragano wasn’t charged on the racketeering count, although prosecutors also sought his detention pending trial. In addition to the racketeering count, several defendants, including Mr. Ricciardo and his cousin, were charged with extortion, conspiracy, fraud and conspiracy to make false statements.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of people identified in an indictment as members of the Colombo crime family. It is 11, not more than a dozen.