Monday, December 07, 2009

Full Belly Project founder Jock Brandis will receive the 2009 Clarence Award from the University of North Carolina Wilmington at its annual community holiday film screening at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13 at Kenan Auditorium.

Each year, the UNCW Department of Film Studies presents the Clarence Award, named for the angel-in-training who guides Jimmy Stewart's character in the classic Frank Capra film "It's a Wonderful Life," to an unsung hero in the local community. The award recognizes an individual who gives unselfishly to others in order to make a difference in the lives of those in need. Brandis founded the nonprofit Fully Belly Project with a group of other Cape Fear-area Peace Corps volunteers in 2003 to help distribute the universal nut sheller, a device Brandis invented to assist African villagers in preparing nut crops for sale. With the nut sheller, villagers can increase the harvest efficiency and gain extra income.

The idea for the sheller came from a 2000 trip to the Republic of Mali in Western Africa, where Brandis watched villagers undertake the long, painful and sometimes crippling task of shelling local nut crops by hand. The hand-powered sheller can be manufactured onsite using concrete poured into molds made by the Full Belly Project and a small number of metal pieces that can also be crafted locally for a cost of around $30. The sheller can process peanuts at a rate of 110 pounds an hour. By comparison, an average individual woman or child can hand shell 3.3 pounds an hour.

Now working as the Full Belly Project's director of research and development, Brandis and the organization are working to create other technologies to assist development projects worldwide. Among other innovations, the organization has modified the original hand-cranked nut sheller for use with gasoline and bicycle powered cranks.

Brandis and the Full Belly Project have received several awards and grants, as well as attention in publications such as The Washington Post, Popular Mechanics, the Wall Street Journal and the Wilmington Star-News. "Peanuts," a documentary about the universal nut sheller, was produced with the support of the Government of Canada and Discovery Channel Canada.

Brandis is "literally saving lives one country at a time," said Lou Buttino, chair of the film studies department. "In the film, Clarence says to George, 'Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn't he?' There would be an awful hole in the world without Jock Brandis."

The film will be shown at the university's Dec. 13 holiday event, which is free and open to the public. Financial donations, new or gently used clothing and toys will be accepted for distribution to those in need through local agencies.

Media contact:
William Davis, UNCW Marketing and Communications, 910.962.2654 or davisw@uncw.edu