Ockenden International began life as The Ockenden Venture. It was founded in 1951 by three local schoolteachers, and took its name from founder Joyce Pearce's family home 'Ockenden' in White Rose Lane, Woking, Surrey. The Ockenden Venture was one of the first refugee charities to be set-up in the aftermath of the World War II. At its peak, the Hollywood actors, Ingrid Bergman, Peter Ustinov and Richard Todd acted as good will ambassadors in its causes.

The organisation became a registered charity on 24 February1955, under the War Charities Act 1940, its stated objective being to receive young East European people from post World War II homeless persons camps in Germany and 'to provide for their maintenance, clothing, education, recreation, health and general welfare'. Within a few years, world events and the increasing numbers of refugees world-wide would lead it to widen both its
remit and its scope. The project had begun in 1951, when Joyce Pearce (1915-
1985) persuaded Woking District Council to help support a holiday for 17 homeless East European teenagers at her sixth form centre at Ockenden House, as part of the Festival of
Britain.  The plight of older non-German speaking children in the refugee camps, for whom the educational provision was inadequate, provided the stimulus for Joyce Pearce, her friend and teaching colleague Margaret Dixon (1907-2001) and her cousin Ruth Hicks (1900-1986),
headmistress of Greenfield School, Woking, to found the Ockenden Venture. The project was initially a modest one based solely in Woking, but houses were soon acquired in Haslemere, and in 1958 Ockenden took over Donington Hall near Derby as a school for boys.

After World Refugee Year was declared in 1959, government money and increased donations enabled Ockenden to open eight new houses across Britain, and a small administrative staff
was established. Chiefly prompted by Joyce Pearce's desire to provide assistance to Tibetan refugees in India, in October 1962 the general council of the charity agreed to amend the
constitution of the Ockenden Venture to state its object was 'to receive displaced children and other children in need from any part of the world and to provide for their maintenance, clothing,education, recreation, health and general welfare', to allow the possibility of help to non-European children. Initially most help took the form of donations towards existing orphanages and schools, and sponsorship schemes, but Ockenden's first direct participation in overseas-based work also began during the 1960s, with projects in India, northern Africa and later south east Asia. In 1971, Ockenden merged with refugee charity, Lifeline.

The most dramatic expansion of the Ockenden Venture came with the government's decision in 1979 to accept Vietnamese 'Boat People' (who had begun leaving south Vietnam in large
numbers after the invasion of Saigon by Communist forces in1975) into the UK. Ockenden, Save the Children and the British Council for Aid to Refugees were given responsibility for a third of the country each to arrange for reception and resettlement of incoming families (Ockenden covered Surrey, the Midlands, the North West, North East, North Wales, Gosport and the Portsmouth area of Hampshire.