Over the next 20 years, Monica was not content to simply denounce the serious social problems afflicting her country. Conscious of the power of the media, she soon started to enlist Marie Claire’s readership of more than 1 million to help call attention to pressing issues.

In the first of these efforts, readers were invited to contribute through Unesco to projects dedicated to rescuing abandoned children.

A story about missing children led a family to the reunion of their daughter Patricia, who had been kidnapped two years earlier. And that was the start of Marie Claire’s campaign to help locate missing children. Thousands of posters were printed with photos sent by families and distributed all over Brazil in a partnership with the beauty products company Natura, which is sold door to door like Avon. TV Globo, the broadcasting arm of the magazine’s publisher, covered the subject in news reports and it was even included in a TV soap opera.

Another urgent issue to which Marie Claire devoted extensive resources was sex tourism, a problem that is growing rapidly in Brazil, victimizing children and teens, yet not taken sufficiently seriously by the authorities. In partnership with an advertising agency, a campaign was created that was aimed at showing government officials the seriousness of the problem. Marie Claire called on readers to sign a petition to be sent to the Ministry of Tourism demanding more rigorous law enforcement.

The readers responded with thousands of signatures, which Monica delivered personally to the Minister of Tourism Marta Suplicy, calling the attention to the problem and asking for more efficient law enforcement against sexual tourism.

Throughout her 23 years of service, Monica never stopped using the magazine to shine a light on social problems and to advocate for change.