After 20 years of CJS Focus on Volunteering the last ever edition will be published in February – and we’re hoping it will be a bumper edition to sign off.

  

In the summer of 2004 we had a brainwave, or rather I had a brainwave and everyone else in the office groaned! That idea was to produce supplements to be included in CJS Weekly as an added extra, each supplement would be looking at one part of the sector, a way to throw the spotlight on one area. We talked it round and decided it might be worth giving it a go and so on 22 November 2004 our first CJS Special Edition was published, it looked at Trees and Hedges, you can read it here. We worked with The Tree Council and filled it with articles from them and a few colleagues, also lots of little listings adverts for useful organisations and tools and finished it off with some jokes. The following February we published the first edition looking at volunteering which also covered seasonal work. Those first few small supplementary editions went down very well and we decided we would make it a regular feature, initially published quarterly. When the website grew that supplement became a stand alone publication: CJS Focus with the first one of the newly titled editions being published in February 2009 featuring - yes, Volunteering. Over the years we’ve covered many areas, water, trees, wildlife, ecology, countryside management, support services and one on volunteering every year and worked with many different “in association” organisations. However, times change and the way we consume the information has changed too, no longer physical newsletters by post but online. Not being constrained by the dimensions of A4 or the cost of sending sheaves of paper means we’ve been able to increase our information coverage and we now publish two or three new articles every week meaning that CJS Focus has lost some of its relevance. However, we still think it important to highlight those harder to reach areas of the sector and after testing the water last year with Careers Week and Volunteers Week we have decided to launch Focused Weeks allowing CJS Focus to evolve into a new exciting format. Each Week will be filled with articles about working in the chosen areas, job profiles and signposting where you can find resources including those with CJS, so much the same information as the CJS Focus newsletter but in a more easily digestible format being spread out across the week rather than in one large information “dump”. This new format will also allow us to cover more areas every year, instead of three or four special editions there will be six to eight Focused Weeks per year. Each week will feature one area corresponding with a themed week, like Careers Week, or to tie in with a major awareness or celebration event such as Tree Week as in the first Special Edition.

  

Our featured weeks this year will be:

3-8 March - Careers Week

21-27 April - Mammal Society’s mammal week, we will major on working with animals and wildlife

1-7 June - Volunteers Week

11-17 August – is an Environmental Education focus to tie in with the United Nations International Youth Day

6 – 12 October - British Food Fortnight farming, in last year’s reader survey you asked for more coverage on agricultural themes so during the second week of the fortnight which runs between Friday 26 September 2025 to Sunday 12 October 2025 we’ll be looking at agro-ecology, conservation grazing and how it’s possible to marry the need of food production with countryside conservation and biodiversity gains.

And finally to keep the Special Edition connection we’ll be covering all things woody during The Tree Council’s National Tree Week between 24 and 30 November.
Instead of volunteering next February we will instead join up with National Apprenticeship Week and promote this very important route into the sector.

Each week will have job profiles, articles pertinent to the subject and of course lots of links, connections and suggestions to help you dive into each subject area.

We hope you find our new Focused Weeks an easy, helpful way to discover more about the many different areas of the countryside, conservation sector.

If you have any suggestions for areas to cover in 2026 or would like to contribute content for any of this year’s Weeks please please contact Amy by email. You can find guidance on the sort of articles we source here.

Kerryn Humphreys, CJS Editor