The topic of this year’s summer school was "Water in the Aral Sea Basin under Climate Change - Management and policy challenges from data and knowledge perspectives" intending to introduce innovative methods and tools for the analysis and monitoring of water and land resources in Central Asia.

 Showing the importance of this event, more than 20 young professionals from the region of Central Asia (CA) were actively engaged in a two-week-long summer school.

Despite facing common problems during online events such as internet connection problems, blackouts in certain CA countries and dealing with 4 different time zones, we successfully completed two weeks of interesting lectures. Participants were introduced to the basics of R, QGIS, regional climate and specified tools and data for the climate of CA. Lecturers and assistants from German renowned institutes were delivering every day new course material in a form of talks and hands-on exercises where participants had an opportunity to actively participate.

Another challenging aspect during the online event is the lack of social interactions that would normally happen during the coffee/ lunch breaks or excursions. We, organizers, tried to motivate participants to share a bit of their everyday routine with small “photo challenges” on which participants responded positively. Through these challenges, we got to know participants a bit better and learned about their favourite coffee places, working environments and sights in their hometowns.

We hope to continue with this tradition for many more years to come, and to see again motivated and inspired participants in person in Almaty already next year!