WHEN Sistren Theatre Collective celebrates its 34th anniversary exactly one week from today, it will be a celebration of its survival in the face of restricted budgets, limited government support and the perils of working to change a deeply entrenched culture of violence in Jamaica’s inner-cities.

Founding member, now executive director Lana Finikin, speaking with reporters and editors at the Observer Monday Exchange yesterday, makes no bones about how Sistren has managed to stay alive and relevant: “Love for the people,” she said.

She pointed to the rewards of being able to influence even one inner-city child to look at domestic or community violence a little differently, or to lift himself or herself out of the cycle of poverty and ignorance.

“At the end of the day, when you can see 50 kids from a Hannah Town, 40 from a Grants Pen, 30 from Rockfort and another 40 from Fletcher’s Land, keep on calling me and saying, ‘When are you coming back?’, you feel a sense of, ‘Yes!’, you have reached these kids,” she said.

Finikin is speaking of the success of the collective’s myriad counselling, social intervention and training programmes it offers across the Corporate Area using dance, drama and drumming, along with plain old dialogue to get through to emotionally and physically battered and economically starved residents.

Sistren Theatre Collective has produced and toured with 12 original plays and numerous skits; developing a method of street ‘drama-in-education’ that draws from real-life experiences and empowers men women and youth to examine their own lives and make positive changes.

Sheer passion and the drive to effect meaningful change among their inner-city ‘clients’ are what propel the organisation’s four permanent staff and 17 part-time employees. They dedicate time and energy to design programmes, conduct research, hold workshops, offer hope and an outlet for debate and conflict resolution among oft-forgotten inner-city residents and do this under less-than-ideal circumstances.

Members report being stuck inside community buildings while warring factions traded bullets outside. They say they have walked into some of the most volatile Kingston communities to ‘reason’ on the ‘corner’ with disenfranchised youths, in their bid to encourage change, all for very little monetary reward.

“The drama group, when they go out there and they perform in the field, yes, they feel good at the end of the day, but honestly, you can’t put on your pot on the fire and pay your mortgage and pay your light bill and pay your water rate,” explained Finikin.

On paper, the Sistren founding member said, they will charge approximately $100,000 to organisations seeking to hire them to create and mount a dramatic work for an event, but, in reality, they sometimes end up taking half that, because their skills are undervalued.

“It’s the same stigma where everybody sees drama as not worth as much as a PhD or Master’s (degree), so they don’t want to pay for the body of the work. They argue and want to get the services for free,” said Finikin.

“But we continue to do it, because at the end of the day, that is what drives you to continue to do what you need to change the lives of three, or four, or five persons, who will have a multiplier effect (on other community members).”

She said they have learned to be resourceful in raising and expending resources.

Silence greeted the Observer’s question about Government support for the work of the collective. However, the organisation is one of six non-governmental organisations working with the Citizen Security and Justice Programme on a project funded by the Government and the Inter-American Development Bank among others.

Sistren provides its services as part of this national security ministry-driven project which deals with youth-at-risk, crime and violence and community image building, which ends this year.

The United Nations funds another of the theatre collective’s projects aimed at reducing violence against women by increasing social awareness, advocating legislative change and training young peer educators.

However, despite an admittedly frustrating and uphill battle, and passing through dark days, including the theft of its bus at gunpoint, Sistren’s members are undaunted and persist in their quest to fulfil their mandate.

“Each of us has a sense of responsibility… everyone does what he has to do,” said gender specialist Danielle Toppin.

“It’s the love, especially for me,” said male development specialist Patrick Williams, who is part of Sistren’s new thrust to reach Jamaican males.

“When you look at a youth and you find out him nuh have nuh fadda, he’s always on the road, you try to instil encouragement, words to touch him, or something.

“Then, when the youth says, ‘Sir, is because of you why such and such a thing happened for me,’ or, him smiling more. Those are the things that warm mi heart, really and truly,” he said.