OUR STORY
How Plaintext came to be.
Plaintext was founded in Kuala Lumpur in 2021 by a small group of people who kept bumping into the same problem: sustainability-related documents — reports, frameworks, disclosure standards — were being discussed everywhere, but very few people felt they understood the vocabulary well enough to follow those conversations with any confidence.
The solution wasn't another online explainer or a long-form PDF. It was a room, a facilitator, and a text. Sitting with a document together, reading it closely, asking what a sentence actually means — that kind of slow, collective reading turned out to be far more useful than any summary.
From a single pilot workshop in Bangsar in 2021, Plaintext has since run more than forty sessions across its vocabulary workshops and reading group formats. Participants range from journalists and civil society professionals to accountants, educators, and graduate students. What they share is curiosity about what these documents actually say.
MISSION & VALUES
What we stand for.
- Literacy over recommendation. We help people read and understand documents. We do not advise on what to do with the information in them.
- Patience as a method. The vocabulary in sustainability-finance literature is dense. We slow down at difficult passages rather than skip past them.
- Openness in the room. There are no wrong questions. Every participant brings a different background, and the discussion is richer for it.
- Public sources only. We work exclusively with publicly available texts — reports, standards, glossaries — so participants can return to the same materials independently.
- Malaysian context where it matters. Where regional examples and Bursa Malaysia disclosures are relevant, we include them.
THE TEAM
The people who run the sessions.
Nadia Rashid
Lead Facilitator
Nadia spent eight years as an environmental policy researcher before co-founding Plaintext. She leads the Vocabulary Workshops and oversees session design across all programmes.
Tan Li Ming
Reading Group Facilitator
Li Ming's background is in academic editing and close reading instruction. She facilitates the six-week reading groups and develops the companion reading notes for each cycle.
Azri Zulkifli
Programme Coordinator
Azri manages scheduling, enrolment, and the printed materials for the Annual Reading Track. He is the first point of contact for organisational bookings.
STANDARDS & PRACTICE
How we work.
No financial advice, ever
Plaintext is strictly an educational organisation. Nothing in our sessions constitutes or resembles financial advice. This boundary is maintained consistently across all formats and facilitators.
Public-domain source materials
All reading materials are drawn from publicly available documents — no proprietary data, no subscription-gated content. Participants receive copies they can read and revisit on their own.
Participant privacy
Attendance lists and contact details are held securely and used only for session administration. We do not share participant information with any third party.
Facilitator preparation
Each session is prepared with written notes, annotated passages, and vocabulary glossaries. Facilitators hold subject-specific reading backgrounds relevant to the materials covered.
Session quality review
Participant feedback is collected after every session. The team meets quarterly to review session quality, update reading lists, and revise materials based on what participants find most useful.
Inclusive discussion environment
Sessions are conducted in English with space for bilingual clarification where helpful. All participants are expected to approach each other's contributions with patience and good faith.
CONTEXT & EXPERTISE
Why this kind of literacy work matters in Malaysia.
Sustainability-related reporting in Malaysia has expanded considerably over the past few years. Bursa Malaysia's enhanced sustainability disclosure requirements, Bank Negara Malaysia's climate risk frameworks, and a growing volume of international standards — from GRI to TCFD to the ISSB — mean that sustainability-finance vocabulary now appears regularly in annual reports, news coverage, and workplace conversations.
Most of this vocabulary arrived before most readers had any opportunity to learn it. Terms like "scope 3 emissions," "stranded assets," "taxonomy alignment," and "transition risk" are used as though they are self-explanatory. Often they are not. The documents themselves are long, structured around specialised knowledge assumptions, and not designed with the general reader in mind.
Plaintext exists to address that gap — not by summarising or interpreting documents on participants' behalf, but by sitting with the texts together and working through what they actually say. This kind of slow, attentive reading is undervalued, but it is one of the more transferable skills available to anyone who wants to engage with sustainability discourse on their own terms.
Kuala Lumpur's concentration of financial services firms, professional bodies, and civil society organisations makes it a particularly appropriate location for this work. We welcome participants from all professional backgrounds.
Interested in joining a session?
We'd be glad to tell you more about current programme schedules and which session might be the right starting point for you.
Get in Touch