**PLEASE NOTE THIS IS A VIRTUAL PROGRAM THAT WILL TAKE PLACE VIA ZOOM. Registrants will receive a link to access the Zoom Meeting via email.**  

Join Professor Cinzia Pica-Smith to learn why interracial friendships are so rare in both children and adults. Explore the systematic barriers that exist in our communities and schools that mitigate the formation and maintenance of these important bonds. Discover the benefits of interracial friendships, including decreasing prejudice, reducing outgroup anxiety, increasing cultural competence, and expanding pro-social behaviors. Following Cinzia's presentation, based on her many years of extensive research, she welcomes questions from the audience.

About Cinzia: Dr. Cinzia Pica-Smith, Associate Professor of Human Services and Rehabilitation Studies and Director of Assumption University’s Women’s Studies Program, has published widely on interracial friendships in children, how these friendships can be supported in schools, and how social justice education impacts all youth. Smith is the co-author of two books -- Intercultural Education: Critical Perspectives, Pedagogical Challenges and Promising Practices and Social Justice Education in European Multi-Ethnic Schools: Addressing the Goals of Intercultural Education.

Register directly on Zoom HERE. Sponsored by the Friends of the Tewksbury Public Library. Presented in collaboration with Libraries Working Towards Social Justice.