Here at Acumen Fund, we often refer to the direct social impact of our investments: number of bednets sold, healthy babies delivered, seeds sown, microfinance loans disbursed, etc.  But there are secondary impacts to Acumen’s investments, too – most notably, employment.

I snapped this photo of a young man, whose name I didn’t catch, taking a quick break at the end of a long day installing a Global Easy Water Products drip irrigation system.  I visited the farm, a 4-hour drive outside Aurangabad, last May, as the thermometer topped 45 degrees Celsius.  Despite the heat, farmers like Ramakrishnan Mahajan must quickly sow their fields and set up their irrigation systems during a short cotton-planting window – which is why he asked his GEWP sales rep to hire a group of six local farmboys to lend a hand.  Each of the boys – including the one pictured here – earned 200 rupees per day over 2 days of work.  For those keeping track at home, that’s about USD $4.50 per worker, per day.

Since 2003, Global Easy Water Products reports that its customers have paid for more than 410,000 man-hours of installation labor.  At rates similar to what Mr. Mahajan paid his crew, that’s more than USD $225,000 of employment income being plowed back into the local economies of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Now if only this worker had a bottle of clean, fresh WaterHealth International branded Dr. Water to cool him down after the work was done…but that’s the subject of another photo for another day.

Rob Katz is a Portfolio Associate at Acumen and co-founder of NextBillion.net.

The Photo of the Week series features images chosen by Acumen Fund staff and community members — favorite photos they’ve taken in the field or pulled from the archive. Look for it every Tuesday.