Alfred Melbourne, Founder of 3 Sisters Farms. Broderick, West Sacramento.
Having spent 18 years of my own life incarcerated, I founded Three Sisters Gardens in 2018 to inspire and empower the youth in our community. I fell back on my Hunkpapa Lakota native heritage and I thought what better way to get these youth to see themselves as leaders and important by teaching them how to grow organic vegetables to give back to the community. We give up to 40-60% of our vegetables to elders, women, and children. During the pandemic, I sent all of our youth home and they weren't happy with it. But we had to make sure that we were taking care of them and doing the right thing. Working with a skeleton crew, we grew 55% less than we could have.