Windle innovations

We began life in Kenya, when our founder, Dr Hugh Austin Windle Pilkington (a British Kenyan who was passionate about education) started supporting refugees in Nairobi with university scholarships. Since then, although we’ve grown to be an international NGO, we’ve managed to preserve what has always made Windle special – a deep commitment to every individual we support, a desire to help everyone achieve their academic potential, regardless of who they are, what they believe, or where they have come from, and a belief that those who have been most affected by conflict and marginalisation should be the architects of more peaceful and just societies.  

We’ve been able to do this because we actively recruit those we have supported in our staff teams, we are trusted by the communities we work in, and we have always strived to come up with innovative solutions to the many complex challenges facing our sector.  

For example, in Kenya, we introduced the Two Schools in One innovation, which won a best practice award in 2016 and was celebrated by UNHCR as a great example of innovation delivering tangible results to the thousands of high-level attendees at the first ever Global Refugee Forum in Geneva in 2019.  

We also pioneered the blended learning online and onsite educational delivery project, Borderless Higher Education for Refugees in Kenya alongside national and international university partners, which enables learners to undertake university degrees from Dadaab refugee camp.  

Find out more about our innovative approaches to the challenge of delivering quality education in refugee settings here.