Read the full article by Gabriel Solis at The Sacramento Observer
Alfred Melbourne, founder and director of Three Sisters Gardens, believes that growing food brings life and opportunities to everyone. But it wasn’t something he realized as he was growing up in one of West Sacramento’s food deserts.
Melbourne grew up in the city’s Broderick neighborhood, located in a designated food desert where access to fresh and nutritious food is lacking. It was also a place of poverty and with high rates of gang involvement. Melbourne learned to garden in his backyard with his stepdad and the two saw an opportunity to serve the community by growing food.
“Food is medicine that feeds a kid better, they’ll perform better, test scores go up, behavioral problems go down, it was just like, wow OK,” Melbourne says of the benefits of fresh food.
Founded in 2018, Three Sisters Gardens is a nonprofit organization with four locations in West Sacramento that teaches youth how to garden using indigenous practices and provides food to local communities in designated food deserts. The gardens also host a variety of community events in order to bring people together.