Marist School Women Build recently wrapped up a home construction project with Habitat for Humanity in southeast Atlanta. It was the ninth successful completion for the organization.

“It is so empowering. In seven weeks, 350 multigenerational women built a home for a single mom,” said Trish Coughlin, a veteran of building four homes and a mother of three.

Marist Women Build is working with women at other Catholic schools to help them develop similar programs.

The group raises about $75,000 to build a home from corporate and family sponsors, Marist students and the women themselves. It cost the volunteer builders $200 each to be able to swing a hammer on site. The Sara Blakely Foundation was a major corporate sponsor.

The group, which was founded in 2001, focuses on building homes for single mothers and their children. This house was dedicated on May 8, Mother’s Day weekend.

Abbot Francis Michael Stiteler, OCSO, was re-elected by his brothers in community on Saturday, May 29, to serve as abbot for a second six-year term. Dom Francis Michael had come to the end of his first term of office serving the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers as its seventh abbot.

Marist hotshot speller Julia Denniss met her goal at the Scripps National Spelling Bee when she made it to the semifinals June 4 in Washington, D.C.

“Julia competed well and everyone at Marist School can certainly be proud that she represented us very well,” according to the Marist Facebook page. Julia is a rising eighth-grader at the Atlanta school.

Julia’s words spelled correctly were issei; vibrissae; venturi; intercolline.

Making it to round six among only 19 spellers, she stumbled over poilu—noun, a French common soldier—which she recited as poilue.

Julia’s efforts result in her tying for ninth place in the rankings. She was one of two Georgia students in the bee and represented the Georgia Association of Educators as state champion.