by Laura Glesby
Before Melanie Yunga joined Connecticut Students for a Dream (C4D), “I was a really shy person,” she said. “I didn’t have the sense of community.”
Over the course of her time at C4D as a Wilbur Cross High School student, Yunga found her voice advocating for herself, her family, and her friends as immigrants facing the intensifying threat of ICE detention.
On Thursday, now in college, she introduced keynote speaker Attorney General William Tong to an audience of 150 people gathered at Anthony’s Ocean View to celebrate her and her peers’ work — and then helped her friends apply glitter under the color-changing dance floor spotlight.
17-year-old Emely and 16-year-old Nancy aglow at the gala.
That was the scene at the Morris Cove restaurant as C4D held a “Sweet Sixteen” gala, drawing over 150 students and supporters.
They celebrated 16 years of C4D, a student-led organization devoted to training undocumented youth across Connecticut in community organizing.
They had seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) seize their classmates, and they protested until those classmates walked free. They traveled to Hartford to tell legislators that they deserved to go to school without fear of ICE, that their families deserved to be able to afford medical appointments. They served as family translators, planned out worst-case-scenarios with their parents, and lived in fear of unmarked vans.
And on Thursday night, they had an opportunity to dress up and dance.
The annual C4D gala is “a really joyful event,” said Yunga. The gathering was a reminder, she said, that “even though in our community there’s a lot of hard times, we can still feel the light. We can have faith and come together.”
Yunga, who graduated from Wilbur Cross in May and is now a freshman at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU), is a member-leader of C4D, mentoring fellow students.
She recalled many months in 2025 of protesting and advocating after ICE detained her fellow C4D member and Wilbur Cross schoolmate, Esdrás.
Yunga said that coming together with her peers to fight — successfully— for their classmate’s freedom gave her comfort during a time of intense worry. She knew that “our families would be protected” by the students and allies of her community, she said. “We would not be fighting alone.”
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