ÖKA (Volunteering Hungary – Centre of Social innovation) is the leading organization for volunteer development in Hungary. We have been active since 2002 and led a number of initiatives from creating the Act of Volunteering, to building up a country wide Volunteer Centre network, and also running a volunteering portal (onkentes.hu). We are involved in promotion, training, advocacy, and consultation.

Since 2005, we have developed corporate volunteer programs, including nearly 400 programs for over 50 corporations all over the country. Based on these connections, we formed a framework for pro bono projects. 2015 was an important year as ÖKA created a new entity - the Pro Bono Workshop Non-Profit Ltd., and the Pro Bono Initiative of the Year within our Volunteering Award program organized by the Pro Bono for Social Good conference (prokonf.hu), and KreatON the first creative marathon in Hungary.

Based on the success of KreatON, ÖKA have received many requests to prepare marathons and other pro bono projects for 2016. ÖKA aims to grow more pro bono programs and run 10–15 projects per year towards acting as the main pro bono provider of Hungary in the future.

András started to work on the development of volunteerism in 1998 as Program Manager at the Nonprofit Information and Training Centre Foundation (NIOK). As Executive Director of ÖKA he launched several new initiatives, such as the Act on Volunteerism, the Volunteer Centres Network, the volunteer management trainer pool, the IDEA long term volunteering project (ÖTLET) and the National Volunteer Strategy of Hungary.

In recent years he helped to create the corporate volunteering strategy of several companies and has been focusing on the development of pro bono culture in Hungary. He created the Pro Bono for Social Good conference and several pro bono programs in Hungary with companies like GE, E.ON and Mastercard. András is author of several articles on corporate volunteering, responsible business, pro bono development, and has been featured in HVG Business and Forbes.

Since June 2015 he became a Global Council member of the Global Pro Bono Network. And was a member of the Board of Directors at the European Volunteer Centre (CEV) between 2006 and 2012. As appreciation to his efforts for development of the volunteer sector in Hungary he was awarded with the Gold Cross of Merit of the Hungarian Republic in 2013.