This presentation by Aliya Ibraimova was part of OpenCon 2017's Regional Models for Open Research and Open Education panel. Aliya shared the successes and challenges of integrating openness in the Kyrgyz context through the implementation of Kyrgyz Mountains Environmental Education and Citizen Science project (KMEECS) and subsequent projects. KMEECS project applies a transdisciplinary approach to knowledge generation. It combines citizen science on the community level, environmental research and teacher training to foster awareness of and interaction with the local environment. At the same time it aims at generating locally relevant data on the environment in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. The project pilots the introduction of low-cost environmental field courses on water monitoring in schools in mountain communities of Kyrgyzstan’s Naryn province. Based on a citizen science approach, students analyse and generate data on their water resources, which are fed into a network of open environmental data.