From delegate to Head of Technology at EYP Spain

Three years in a volunteer-run NGO, from my first session as a delegate to leading a regional session to building the platform the organisation will run on after I leave.

The organisation

The European Youth Parliament brings young people together to debate the issues shaping Europe. EYP Spain runs entirely on volunteers: every session has to be planned, funded and delivered by people who are also studying full time, and the team changes every year.

How I got here

I came in through debate. After years of Model United Nations, my first EYP session was in February 2023, as a delegate in the Human Rights committee (DROI) at the Valencia regional session. I stayed because EYP is about the people, consensus and growing together, not winning the debate.

From there I moved to the organising side:

Feb 2024: logistics and operations for the Valencia and Mallorca regional sessions.
Sep 2024: logistics for the national conference in Valencia.
Feb 2025: head organiser of the Valencia regional session.
Jul 2025: Head of Technology, on the extended board.
Oct 2025: corporate sponsorships for the Euro-Mediterranean Youth Summit in Málaga, which brought together 300 people from 40+ countries.

Leading a session

As head organiser in Valencia I led a team of 7 to run the session for 100 delegates, and owned everything from budget and sponsors to venue and programme.

The hardest moment was finding a replacement venue for the General Assembly. The bigger lesson was ownership: when something a team member was responsible for went wrong, it was still my outcome, and mine to fix.

Running the technology

As Head of Technology I own:

our cloud architecture, built on Oracle Cloud, Docker and Cloudflare;
the n8n automations that keep a volunteer organisation moving;
a self-hosted platform with our internal tools (ERP, CRM and volunteer tooling), used by 70 people;
the website, accounts, member management and permissions;
our AI policy and direction.

The biggest piece right now is the platform: making it maintainable and able to grow, with proper cloud and secret management.

Building for after I leave

Volunteers change every year, so whatever I build has to keep working when I am not there to explain it. The goal is to leave the organisation in a good place: clean and organised, with rules set and direction decided, so someone less technical or less experienced can take it over without it crumbling.