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It’s a Wednesday afternoon and young schoolchildren are staring to trickle into a park in Padang’s Alai Parak Kopi subdistrict, where a blue tarpaulin is held up with bamboo poles and rope.

The children run around, laughing and screaming with excitement. They come here three times a week after school to meet with other children in the community and play games organized by local nonprofit organization SurfAid.

What they think is just an afternoon of fun and games with friends is actually part of the organizations’s psychosocial pilot project. Most of these children are doing well, considering that, just two months ago, an earthquake wreaked havoc on their neighborhoods, bringing homes to the ground. But many children are still struggling.

“We did assessments in four areas of the city, and we found high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder,” said Stacey Howe, a SurfAid program coordinator with a background in counseling. “We found that in these four areas, 53 percent of kids had post-traumatic stress disorder. The worse-hit areas had higher levels.”

Yaya, a psychologist, walks around the children with a loudspeaker and instructs them to sit in a circle. On this day, they have to draw a picture of someone close to them with the crayons provided. Child psychology students from local universities have volunteered their help, circling the tent and monitoring the children’s behavior.

“Kids here are still very afraid,” Yaya said. “There are kids who are showing abnormal behavior, like they won’t go inside, or if they hear a loud noise, like a plane, they think another earthquake is coming.”

When SurfAid did their initial assessments, Howe said, many children had begun wetting their beds and many were unwilling to leave their parents’ side.

“When we started the activities, we got the kids to sing and dance, but sometimes they would bully each other, so we focus now on less physical activities,” Howe said.

The drawing activity helps the children develop fine motor skills, but it also offers Yaya and the other volunteers an insight into each child’s psychological state.

“The other day, we asked the kids to draw their families, and one kid pulled out a red crayon and drew his father falling out of a helicopter,” said Matt Hannon, also a SurfAid program coordinator. “It might not mean anything serious, but they’re looking into it.”

Howe and Hannon — an Australian couple who met in Jakarta as international students — were living in the Mentawai Islands, around 150 kilometers west of Padang, when the quake hit. After the disaster, the two 25-year-olds relocated to the city, where residents are receiving little aid.

Most nongovernmental organizations have based themselves north of the city in Pariaman and Agam, the worst-affected districts, leaving some urban areas neglected. SurfAid has finished its emergency disbursements and is now running programs that require little funds.

“We’re only doing this in four parts of the city. Unfortunately, our resources are limited,” Hannon said. Word of what SurfAid was doing spread quickly through the city, and elementary schools have been asking them to run similar programs for their students.

Hannon and the volunteer psychologists recently visited the SD05 Padang Pasir elementary school to run similar activities. Around 60 students gathered in a hall to sing songs about disaster preparedness.

“If you feel an earthquake, cover your head and run away from the window. Run outside, run outside,” Yaya and the children sang in Indonesian.

Yaya later instructed them to sit down, close their eyes and take a number of deep breaths as soothing traditional Padang Saluang music filled the air. A few children refused to close their eyes and simply stared straight ahead as Yaya spoke.

“We are trying to teach the children a way to deal with anxiety, because many kids are still feeling stressed,” she said.

SurfAid’s project is likely to last six months, and Howe and Hannon fear these communities they have come to know well will be left without support.

Recently, SurfAid organized a day for Padang’s Banuaran community to come together. “We had an event where the women cooked for 300 people. We bought all the ingredients, and the men helped set up the tents,” Hannon said.

It was the first time the community had gathered since the quake.

“The idea is to bring people together so they can move forward together into the future,” he said. “We’re trying to convey to them that it’s OK to feel anxiety. That time heals the heart.”