Andrew Kooman

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. Andrew now lives with his wife and son in London, Ontario. ==Activism==

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) 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 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. 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, 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. With the help of two brothers Matthew and Daniel, Kooman established Unveil Studios. ==Writing career==

Andrew Kooman is an author and playwright. and many of the issues he writes about are gender-based. By February 2012, Kooman was working on a screenplay version of She Has a Name to expose it to a larger audience. Some Americans expressed an interest in staging She Has a Name in the United States. and also heard about it through a friend of his who was working at an aftercare centre in Bangkok, Thailand to restore the dignity of former sex workers. There was a tour of She Has a Name in 2012, and the final performances were held in Red Deer. Kooman was glad to have the tour conclude in his hometown because the people of Central Alberta were very supportive of the play. During the tour, Kooman was awarded the Outstanding Alumnus Provincial Award Celebrating Excellence (PACE) by the Alberta Association of Colleges & Technical Institutes (AACTI) and the Alberta Ministry of Enterprise. The PACE Award ceremony is biennial, and took place on June 13 in Edmonton at the AACTI Board of Governors Conference. ==References==