This year is a very special one for CJS, it's our silver anniversary!
Can you believe it?
The first edition of Countryside Jobs
Service, which later became CJS Weekly, was published 25 years ago that's
roughly 1250 editions.
We're celebrating our birthday in lots of different ways
across the year, keep an eye on our blog and social media feeds for
details. Starting with an updated logo: just for our 25th birthday year which you'll
see throughout the year.
Some things change and others stay the same
One thing that has remained unchanged across all the years
is that CJS is unique in offering free advertising for just about everything
relating to our sector. However, we know
that sometimes you need more information than we can include in the short free
linages and often logos are required so we're delighted to be able to keep the rates
for these paid options unchanged for another year.
What has changed is that Countryside Jobs Service now
advertises much more than countryside jobs our range has expanded to include
ecology, wildlife, animal care, community involvement, rural and urban sites,
fundraising, admin support, visitor management, arboriculture, environmental
and outdoor education and today we publish a lot more than 'just' jobs
advertising voluntary roles and recruitment days, apprenticeships and intern
placements, citizen science projects, training courses, professional events, a
full news round up service and a vast array of in depth information and
articles providing insights and help to establish professional and new starters
alike.
From small beginnings
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| Celebrating Niall's retirement |
In July 1994 the first edition of CJS Weekly landed on
doormats - mostly those belonging to members of CMA who, along with SCRA,
received a 10% discount off subscriptions (no longer I'm afraid). It seems like it was only five minutes ago
that we were stuffing sheets of A4 from a daisy-wheel printer into multi-sized,
shaped (and even perfumed) self addressed envelopes. Yes, that's how it
all started which was a huge step forward from photocopies of adverts in
newspapers which formed the Jobs Service for CMA members way back when.
CJS founders, Niall and Anthea Carson took on the task of converting those
snippets into a cohesive newsletter, Anthea devised the unique advert format, Niall
sorted out the filing system for the envelopes and they were off. As word
spread of how good this new service was, subscriber numbers increased and the
daisy-wheel printer was swapped for a dot-matrix before the heat from the
printwheel caused the office to combust. In those early days there was no
paid advertising only the Standard Linage which was all free; with the increase
of outside funding and funding partners needing to use logos (even on a free
advert) we started taking paid adverts. CJS has continued to grow following the
natural progression of the countryside sector with just a gentle nudge every
now and then.
Niall retired in 2006 - we had a little celebration - since then the CJS Team has grown to five members plus office
dogs, people often can't believe that it's just our small team producing the
behemoth that is CJS, covering three newsletters, one quarterly publication and
the huge website - sometimes I'm not sure I do either!
Reasons to be proud
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| Digging out the lane after heavy snow |
We're incredibly proud that in our 25 years we have never
missed a deadline despite some very trying circumstances ranging from seriously
broken websites and multi-day power cuts to needing a large digger to excavate
several feet of snow from the lane to the office,
 |
| Helping to take the post up to the Post Office |
We're just as proud that we hold true to Niall and Anthea's
principals of putting back as much into conserving the countryside as possible,
CJS is run along Social Enterprise principals.
We still offer Standard Free Linage in CJS Weekly in fact, it's possible
to advertise virtually anything (anything relevant to the countryside that is)
free of charge with CJS.
Presents!
We've been asking friends to let us know what CJS means to
them and we'll be sharing their thoughts with you throughout the year. They'll
all be collated here and you're welcome to add your comments (email is the easiest way).
We're also accepting and giving away birthday presents
starting with a lucky dip for 25 annual email subscriptions to CJS Weekly.
Simply send us your name and email address and at the end of the month we'll
pull the names of the lucky winners out of a hat (OK, use a random number
generator but you get the gist!). We also have four 2019 calendars from the British Wildlife Photography Awards which will be drawn one a week, more details on the Birthday gift draw page.
Into the future…
During the year we are launching several new projects not
least of which will be a sparkling new website later this spring once the
January madness dies down and we get on with the monster task of transferring
all the information. We have something
exciting planned for July which is our actual birthday month, so keep reading!