We just finished a month of soccer fever with the Women’s FIFA World Cup in Australia and New Zealand that finally saw Spain capture the title for the first time ever. As I saw the cultural exchange and international collaboration evolve in international soccer, I could not avoid to compare this to how the Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology (PAAO) plays the same role as FIFA in bringing together all the countries and ophthalmologists in The Americas for our own cultural exchange and international collaboration.

We are very proud to announce the continuation and success of our Pan-American initiative on bringing together PAAO Young Ophthalmologists (PAAO-YO) in all the 26 affiliated national societies. Organizing this vital activity is the PAAO-YO Committee that is co-chaired by Eduardo Viteri Jr MD (Ecuador) and Lina Cernichiaro MD (Mexico). It is a very active group of young ophthalmologists and we have gathered PAAO-YO representation/delegates from all our national affiliated societies.