The Power of Transnational Solidarity

Voices Across Waters is a living chain of conversations among ecofeminist activists from across the Mediterranean: Svetlana Balovska Đurković, Mariona Bonsfills Clotet, Noe Diaferia, Asmaa Elmalky, Simona Getova, Jasmina Husanović, Lena Penšek, Roula Seghaier, and Shereen Talaat. Through intimate and courageous dialogue, the series amplifies voices, stories, and political imagination rooted in care, solidarity, resistance, and transformation.Across borders and struggles, each episode explores how ecofeminism challenges patriarchal, colonial, capitalist and extractivist systems while nurturing collective alternatives grounded in justice, dignity and ecological balance. These are not just interviews. They are acts of alliance building towards collective liberation. They are conversations between commerades, between friends. They are hope.In this episode of Voices Across Waters, Lena interviews Roula about growing into feminism intuitively and understanding ecofeminism through lived realities of militarization, migration, and community memory.Roula reflects on how feminist consciousness often begins as a feeling, a quiet refusal of injustice, and expands into collective struggle. Together, they explore how militarized borders, forced migration, and extractive systems disproportionately shape women’s lives across the Mediterranean.From ancestral memory to transnational solidarity, this conversation reminds us that shifting narratives requires trust, vulnerability, and deep listening. In a world shaped by imperialism and capitalism, building relationships becomes an act of resistance, an act of hope.Roula Seghaier (interviewee) is a Tunisian interdisciplinary writer and organizer in migrant rights, labor justice and intersectional feminism. She is currently based in New York City and serves as the International Coordinator of the Women in Migration Network (WIMN).Lena Penšek (interviewer) is a Slovenian activist and feminist, currently based in Barcelona. She organizes in the intersection between climate and social justice, transnational organising, degrowth, solidarity and feminism.This podcast series is part of the Ecofeminism in the Mediterranean initiative and was developed as a chain-interview format designed to create relational dialogue across territories, experiences, and struggles.An initiative by Research & Degrowth International: Research & Degrowth is an academic association dedicated to advancing research, training, and collective reflection on degrowth, ecological justice, and post-growth transformations. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, it supports critical thinking and collective action toward socially just and ecologically viable futures. Project coordination and leadership by Lena Penšek, activist and communicator of the Ecofeminism in the Mediterranean project, with visual identity and artwork by Alexandra Mestre Garcia. Find out more at https://degrowth.org/ Design and production by Efecto Colibrí: Efecto Colibrí helps create narratives that advance a just, diverse, and regenerative reality. It drives systemic change by transforming the stories that quietly shape our worlds. Through narrative research, co-design of systemic-change narratives, and story activation, Efecto Colibrí builds understanding, moves conversations forward, and equips teams to create change through narrative clarity in times of noise and polarization. Creative design by Ana Amrein, founder of Efecto Colibrí, together with Gonzalo Díaz, architect and editor. Find out more at: https://efectocolibri.com/en/ If this conversation resonates with you, share it and help these voices travel further across the Mediterranean and beyond.