UConn’s BOLD program focuses on facilitating opportunities for women’s leadership on campus through funding, programming, and engagement in service projects.

Once accepted into BOLD through a competitive application process, scholars in BOLD cohorts are given funding and support for individual student-led projects. They find a mentor and work to refine and execute their project, which is typically implemented during the summer between their junior and senior years.

Rosado and her roommate, Daniela Bedoya ’24 (SFA), were both accepted into BOLD’s fifth cohort. And, lucky for Rosado, Bedoya is a photography major. “I was struggling to figure out how I was going to present the project. I’m not great with public speaking. I’m not great with talking to people. So I was like, You know what? Let me just put it in a documentary and let it speak for itself.”

With Bedoya’s help, Rosado got a Sony camera that was easy to learn how to use, and found an enthusiastic mentor in Barbara O’Neill, an associate clinical nursing professor with a background in journalism and filmmaking.

Rosado planned her trip to Guatemala City for summer 2023, lining up interviews and stays with family members, but hit an unexpected roadblock when her flight was abruptly canceled. When she arrived in Guatemala a week later, her originally scheduled interview subjects were no longer available, and she scrambled to regroup. Her aunt, a lawyer who works on women’s reproductive health and maternal abuse issues, helped make new connections.

“And thank God she did,” says Rosado, “because they came out perfect. They were the best interviews I could have found.”

A large part of Rosado’s work in Guatemala involved interviewing subject-matter experts — including the program coordinator at OSAR, practicing doctors and midwives, and the executive director of a health center that conducts clinics for women. Their expertise and perspective helped her tell a story about the social, cultural, and political factors that often affect the lives of women and young girls in Guatemala.

She took a week to teach herself the professional video editing software she used to compile her work into the 59-minute documentary “Una Flor Marchita,” which she screened for the first time at the Student Union in Storrs last December.

“Una flor marchita translates to ‘a withered flower,’” she says. “I picked the title because the flower symbolizes innocence and purity, which are qualities that are robbed from these children at a young age.”

The film, says O’Neill, “provides valuable insight into a subject that is underreported. Kimberly learned and performed all the roles that would typically require the expertise of a scriptwriter, videographer, editor, and production team.”

Rosado hopes to educate and advocate for others by sharing their stories.

“We live in the U.S., so we have a different point of view,” she says.

“There are countries where the people are suffering, and they don’t really know what sexual reproductive health is. They don’t know their rights as women, so they don’t seek them. They’re blind to what their rights should be.”