Who We Are

 In Los Cabos, children are born every year with cleft lip and palate — a condition that affects how they eat, speak, and move through the world. Surgery can repair the physical cleft, but it cannot teach a child to speak. For years, families here had nowhere to turn.

ComuniCabo was founded to change that.

It started with Dr. Emil Hecht, an ENT and Facial Plastic Surgeon, and Tannia Hecht, a Speech-Language Pathologist, who came to Los Cabos as part of a surgical mission. They witnessed something that stayed with them: children whose lips and palates had been surgically repaired, but who still could not communicate. The surgery had been done. The speech work had never begun.

The Hechts knew that speech therapy for cleft palate children is highly specialized — it requires training most local therapists simply hadn’t received. So they found three licensed speech therapists willing to learn, and brought in expert mentors from Mexico and the United States to train them.

ComuniCabo was born.

In 2017, the Los Cabos Children’s Foundation (LCCF) welcomed ComuniCabo as a project, followed by the Monarca Canada Foundation, enabling tax-deductible donations from the US and Canada. In 2019, LCCF recognized ComuniCabo as a full allied foundation. In 2020, ComuniCabo became a legally constituted Mexican foundation, allowing it to issue tax receipts to Mexican donors.

Then came a pivotal moment. In 2022, in partnership with Smile Train, the Los Cabos Children’s Foundation, and the Baja California Sur Ministry of Health, ComuniCabo helped establish the BCS State Cleft Lip and Palate Program — the first government-backed, state-wide program in Baja California Sur providing comprehensive, coordinated care to children with CLP. ComuniCabo is a founding partner of this program, contributing the speech therapy, psychology, and orthodontic services at its core.

By 2024, ComuniCabo had also begun receiving grants from the Querencia Foundation, reflecting the growing recognition of the organization’s impact.

Today, ComuniCabo is a team of six professional, licensed therapists working across Los Cabos and La Paz — including a remote therapist serving families in the northern reaches of Baja California Sur. Behind them is a volunteer board of US, Canadian, and Mexican citizens united by a single cause.

Dr. Emil Hecht passed away in 2025. We honor his memory with every child who speaks a little more clearly because he cared enough to begin.