Andrew Kooman

Andrew Kooman
Born	Red Deer, Alberta
Nationality	Canadian
Alma mater	University of Calgary
Information
Period	2009-present
Genre	Historical fiction Legal thriller Tragedy Young adult fiction
Dramatic devices	Greek chorus
Debut works	Ten Silver Coins
Notable work(s)	She Has a Name
Works with	Stephen Waldschmidt
Awards	Scripts At Work/Alberta Playwrights Network Award

Andrew Kooman is an author and playwright from Red Deer, Alberta, Canada.

Andrew Kooman is from Red Deer, Alberta, and graduated from the Bachelor of Arts collaborative degree program between Red Deer College and the University of Calgary in 2003. He also studied English and creative writing at a university in Edmonton, and graduated from the Multimedia Web Developer program at the University of Calgary in 2008. As of June 2012, he was working in public relations at Red Deer College.

Andrew Kooman first became aware of the issue of human trafficking while he was working for the Christian nonprofit organization Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in southeast Malaysia, where he met child victims of human trafficking, but Kooman later came to realize that human trafficking is an issue in Canada as well; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) estimate that between 600 and 800 people are trafficked into Canada every year. Kooman has spoken about the cases in which people have been trafficked into Calgary and Edmonton in order to work in the sex industry, and has posited that sex workers have likely been trafficked into his hometown of Red Deer as well since it is also located along Alberta Highway 2. Kooman continued to work in Malaysia with YWAM for two years, towards the end of which time he visited Singapore, where he attended an international conference on human trafficking, there learning details on the issue that shocked him. The conference focused on the military use of children and the prostitution of children. One of the facts that stuck with Kooman was that there are children aged five and under who are forcibly prostituted daily, and that many of these children end up spending their entire lives as human trafficking victims. Kooman is the director of Raise Their Voice, a creative, justice-driven,nonprofit organisation in Red Deer. The other four members of the organization are his family members.

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