Hanis Kakaba Habila, a 2024 graduate of Social Integration MA program.
He lives in Budapest and is a Lutheran Christian community leader, teacher, and social entrepreneur. His calling is to foster intercultural relations, protect human dignity, and build community. Through his work, he teaches, leads humanitarian missions, and manages his business, with the primary goal of all three activities being service and community building. His philosophy is to combine practical assistance with the promotion of intercultural understanding. Since May 2025, Hanis has served as the coordinator of the Városliget Evangelical Congregation, an English-speaking Lutheran community in Budapest. There, he organizes weekly worship services, preaches, leads the liturgy, and maintains direct contact with visiting pastors. He coordinates the congregation’s Bible study group and leads youth ministry. An important part of his work is helping foreigners living in Budapest integrate; for them, the congregation serves as a family and a community far from home.
From June 2024, he also worked for one year as a youth volunteer with Resonate Global Mission (North American Christian Reformed Church), where he participated in numerous missionary projects in Budapest, and was an active member of the mission ministry assisting Roma children in Gagybátor, where monthly community programs were organized for the children in Gagybátor, featuring games, arts and crafts, and community storytelling. He currently works with the organization as a technical assistant at the Columba Scottish Mission on Vörösmarty Street, where he handles the sound system for worship services, assists with administrative tasks, organizes community events, and supports the integration of refugees and the local community.
In 2003, he founded The Widows' Fund Project, which supports vulnerable widows living in Nigeria by providing food, hygiene kits, and other essential items to those in need. With the help of Hanis’s family and friends, the first donation packages have already reached more than fifty widows in numerous Nigerian communities. Their feedback served as an important motivation for Hanis to continue the project. Thanks to ongoing donations, the project has surpassed its original scope: they have provided a home for a widow, as they were able to complete the construction that had previously stalled due to financial difficulties. The project offers long-term support to vulnerable widows, helping them restore their self-confidence and dignity within the local community.
In 2025, Hanis founded Ziggurat Solutions Kft. in Budapest, a company specializing in property management and renovation. The company provides high-quality renovation and management services with qualified partners, but beyond its business goals, it also serves as a social enterprise that offers safe and formal employment opportunities to locals, immigrants, and students in higher education, thereby supporting social inclusion and cooperation among city residents.
Since September 2004, he has been working as a volunteer instructor at the Institute of Intercultural Psychology and Education at ELTE PPK, where he leads seminar work in several courses, primarily on the topics of religion, religion-based conflicts, and Nigerian ethnic groups.
About the award:
In 2021 researchers, and staff of the Institute of Intercultural Psychology and Education at ELTE PPK established the Dr. Mónika Szabó Award—in memory of Mónika Szabó, who passed away on March 3, 2020, after a serious illness – on the first anniversary of her death, the Dr. Mónika Szabó Award, with which they aim to honor an outstanding university student or an activist working for social integration and gender equality each year, in memory of and as a tribute to the person for whom the award is named and her work.