Trauma Relief Education Learnings from the Aceh Floods 2025

After severe floods and landslides displaced families across Aceh Tamiang, Ecogames partnered with KUN Humanity System+ to bring play-based support to children in five villages. The programme, Play for Care, used trauma-sensitive games and creative activities to help children reconnect and regain a sense of safety through drawing, storytelling and play.

A few snapshots from the days in the field....

Facilitator Cece led several of the sessions. A month after one visit to Desa Pengidam, she returned to the village and the children remembered her immediately. "They came running and were so happy," she recalled. Throughout the sessions, she noticed how naturally children connected the games to their own experience: shown an image of a tent, they explained without prompting that it was a place for evacuation.

In Desa Pengidam, facilitator Gloria ran a session in the rain, the kind of weather that usually cancels everything. The children stayed anyway. When one child struggled to read during an activity, the others gathered round and took turns helping him sound out the words. At the end of the session, some of the children didn't want to let go when it was time to say goodbye.

Facilitator Aita noticed something else: children didn't need much prompting to talk about protecting nature. While colouring trees and flowers, they spoke about wanting to look after the forest when they grew up. As they played with MuZe Cubes, storytelling dice featuring images like an anchor, a shrimp, a squid, groups of children across different villages independently arrived at a similar idea: when people do something, nature reacts.

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In Desa Serba, a storytelling session using the same cubes turned into something more spontaneous: children developed rhythmic chants based on the images, having so much fun that older teenagers were drawn in to join them. The usual boundaries between age groups dissolved for the rest of the session as everyone laughed joyfully together.

Across all five villages, 248 children aged two to thirteen took part, alongside parents, teachers and community leaders. What comes through in the facilitators' own accounts isn't a program running to plan, so much as a group of adults staying flexible enough to meet children where they were. Children responded with more curiosity, care for each other, and environmental awareness than anyone had expected.

Play for Care was implemented by Ecogames in collaboration with KUN Humanity System+, with support from Nuanu Social Fund.