Ranwadi High School

Ranwadi School (officially known since 2003 as Ranwadi Churches of Christ College) is a co-educational boarding school on Pentecost, Vanuatu. The school has just over 300 students, who come from all over Pentecost Island and from other parts of Vanuatu.

The school is situated 11 km north of Lonorore airport on a coastal hillside adjacent to the village of Vanwoki. Ran wadi has been translated as "on a mound of stones by the shore" in Sowa language. Strictly this name refers to the coastal area below the school; the site on which the main school buildings now stand was historically known as Orobe.

Ranwadi is a Churches of Christ mission school and is run along strongly religious lines; the school's motto is Luke 2:52.

The school's main source of income is the school fees paid by its students, although it also receives some funding from church and government sources. Major development projects at the school have often been funded by overseas aid. In 2005-2006 a major improvement programme was carried out with the help of AusAID (the Australian Agency for International Development).

Although the majority of the staff are local, in the 1990s and 2000s under Principal Silas Buli the school also welcomed a large number of expatriate teachers. Most of these were affiliated with volunteer organisations such as Latitude Global Volunteering (formerly GAP Activity Projects), Project Pacific, VSA, Peace Corps and church mission groups.

Ranwadi traces its origins to 1902, when a local man named Willie Tabimamkan returned from working on a Queensland sugar plantation with a "burning desire" to tell people about Jesus. Tabimamkan wrote to Australia asking for help, and in response, a missionary named John Thompson arrived in 1903. Malaria forced Thompson to leave later that year, but his arrival marked the beginning of the work of the Churches of Christ Overseas Mission Board in the area, which continues to this day. The next white missionary was Frank Filmer, who stayed at Ranwadi from 1908 until 1912.

Tabimamkan died in 1918, and there is no record of what happened at Ranwadi from then until 1934, when another missionary, Mr Sandalls, arrived. He left due to ill health, and was replaced by another missionary, Mr Dow, who stayed at Ranwadi from 1937 to 1939. After this the school was temporarily abandoned and became overgrown, although the work of baptising people into the Churches of Christ was continued by local villagers.

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