Mayfield Senior School: Alumna of the Year Speaks on Campus

During her undergraduate years, she traveled to Ecuador, Costa Rica and many other Latin American countries and found her passion for combining art and social justice. For her Master’s Degree in Social Documentation at UC Santa Cruz, she created the documentary Justice for my Sister for her senior thesis.

Justice for my Sister is a David versus Goliath story: a film about the unstoppable determination of one woman to see that her sister’s murder does not go unpunished. Adela, 27, left home for work one day and never returned. Her ex-boyfriend beat her until she was unrecognizable and left her at the side of the road. Her story is all too familiar in Guatemala, where 6,000 women have been murdered in the last decade and only 2% of the killers were sentenced. Determined to see that Adela’s killer is held accountable, her sister Rebeca, 34, takes on Guatemala’s notoriously corrupt legal system. Completely transformed by her three-year fight, Rebeca emerges as a leader in her rural community with a message for others: justice is possible.

Kimberly has also worked on several campaigns to end domestic violence in Guatemala, including Texting Peace, a text message-based service that allows women who are experiencing domestic violence to reach out to community members who can support and help them. This year, Kimberly was awarded the Cornelian Award, the most prestigious award Mayfield Senior School offers each year to an alumna who has exemplified the qualities of Cornelia Connelly and the school motto, Actions Not Words.

Kimberly was invited by Mayfield Senior School and the Advising Council to visit classes and speak in an all-school assembly. She told her story, emphasizing the importance of her Mayfield education to her development as a woman and an artist and the power of one person to make a major change in the world. “The most important thing I have learned,” she said “is the importance of speaking and listening with your heart.”

Students pledged to help her Text Peace campaign this Saturday by participating in a text challenge. Each student who has
pledged to join in will choose an amount to donate, such as ten cents or a dollar, for each text they receive throughout the day. Proceeds will go towards the campaign. Truly a testament to Actions Not Words!

To learn more about Kimberly Bautista’s film, visit the Justice for my Sister website here.

For more information, visit www.mayfieldsenior.org.