Joann Gorham Champion of the Family: Susan Roylance

Susan Roylance: Patron Saint of United Families International

Winter 2003

If there were a patron saint of United Families International, it would have to be Susan Roylance. This unassuming mother of seven and grandmother of 22 has traveled to 35 countries and participated in 21 international conferences to fight the never-ending battle to preserve the family. It was Susan Roylance who was one of the original co-founders of United Families International and served as its president for many years.

It was Susan Roylance who was the originator of the "Five Respects," (Family, Human Life, Parents, Family Values and National Sovereignty) -- a concise summary of the five aspects upon which UFI bases its work. She originated the idea for, and became the managing editor of The Child Advocacy Journal, a wonderful publication that was distributed to all the United Nations delegates at the World Summit for Children and its negotiating meetings.

It was Susan Roylance who devised "The Grid," an important lobbying tool that maps out the language in a document so that with one glance a UN delegate can see exactly where the potentially problematic phrases are and how they can be changed to make them family friendly.

It was Susan who originated the concept of the Stay Alive program, the amazing AIDS prevention program which targets youth before they become sexually active. Stay Alive is literally saving the lives of thousands of children in numerous countries in Africa. More about that later.

Everything that Roylance has accomplished seems to have prepared her for her latest and (we think) greatest contribution to the pro-family movement -- the compilation of the United Nations “Negotiating Guide.” This miraculous 510-page volume collects under one cover 22 key international treaties and UN conference documents and identifies, organizes and indexes the family-supportive language. The “Negotiating Guide” is the "secret weapon" of the pro-family forces, which UN ambassadors and delegates have begged us for.

Roylance's life changed the day she was "laughed and sneered at" during the Fourth World Conference of Women. "When I introduced myself in a caucus meeting as being from United Families International, I was shocked that they hated families so much, and thought that motherhood was such a demeaning role for women. That day, I decided to get involved to represent motherhood and the family in a positive way."

One of Roylance's special interests is working with orphans and street children. Perhaps that's why she and her husband of 42 years, Bob, are now officially "bi-continental," living in both West Jordan, Utah and in Africa. The work the Roylance's are doing in Africa is an extension of the public policy work Susan has done at the UN for so many years. Taking their cue from the five respects, they are tirelessly working in all of these areas "on the ground." Susan explains the connection between international policy work and humanitarian efforts: "It is so helpful to better understand the cultures of the world, and the conditions of poverty, when we are talking about international public policy. When UN delegates find out that I am actually doing something, rather than just talking about it, they are much more interested in listening to what I have to say as a lobbyist. What I lobby for has greater meaning."

Susan's inspiration for the Stay Alive program and her introduction to Africa began with visits to the countries of Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria. "I was overwhelmed by the problems created by the AIDS pandemic and how it was devastating families and leaving children without parents. A life-changing experience occurred when I saw some teenagers put on a skit where the concluding line was, “When you have sex, use a condom.” The first part of that statement implied that they would have sex, and I knew of the high failure rate of condoms among teenagers. So, now, here I was in Africa hearing that the use of a condom would protect against a fatal disease. I thought, ‘How unfair to these teenagers, to teach them that they are safe if they use a condom.' On the plane going home, I felt the need to do something better for these children who are in such a dangerous situation."

Within a few weeks, Susan was back in Africa at the International Conference on Children and AIDS. "At the end of the conference I went to the USAID offices, and talked with the assistant director. I told him of the comments at the conference that over and over again the speakers said that we needed to have better communication between the children and their parents, and that we needed to educate the children before they became sexually active." She was told that there was a "glaring hole in programs for that age group."

So that became Roylance's mission -- to help create such a program. She spent some time pondering what kinds of lessons could be helpful, put together some ideas and then contacted Wendy Sheffield of Brigham Young University, who wrote the Stay Alive program. Stay Alive was first introduced in Uganda, and in the process, Roylance became more and more aware of the plight of the children who had lost their parents to AIDS. "Both Bob and I were touched by the scene of a ‘sea' of orphans at Kwanza, Kenya. We could not forget them. When we went home, Bob (an experienced farmer) decided to retire a year early to come to Africa and help them improve their agriculture, to help families become self-sustaining and be able to take in orphans as foster children."

Currently, Susan and Bob are working mainly in Kenya, but are also spending some time in Uganda. They have been to Ethiopia to help introduce the Stay Alive there, and in the next few months plan to go to Zambia, Mozambique, Swaziland, and South Africa to help move the Stay Alive program forward. In the years Susan has been involved in the pro-family movement, she has been sustained in her work by the strong feelings she has that "God cares about what we are doing." Once, many years ago when she felt she couldn't go on and wanted to quit, her church leader asked, "How will you feel some day if you know you could have made a difference and you didn't try?" Some days when she is feeling "burned out," Susan thinks of the prayers that are answered so often in this work and remembers, "With the help of God, our own abilities are magnified and we end up accomplishing things that truly amaze us and things we know that we couldn't have done on our own."

Dr. Richard Wilkins says of her: "Susan Roylance is an inveterate doer. In fact, I have never seen anyone work so hard, so long and so effectively on as many projects as Susan."

We couldn't agree more.

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