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NEW ORLEANS— The Essence Festival as we know it won’t be back this year, but that doesn’t mean that Essence has abandoned the city.

In fact, this year they’re back with s series of events called Essence Salute to New Orleans that will be aired online, but you can be in attendance.

New Orlenians can gain access to the events by volunteering only 3 hours at one of 18 local non-profits.

Stephanie Hodges-Dunivan, Essence VP of Branded Content and Video told WGNO News, “We won’t be returning in our half million strong as we usually do this year, but we didn’t want another year to go by without us treating the people of NOLA to some really special live programming.”

Hodges-Dunivan went on to say that “Once you have completed your community service you’ll get a bar code to scan and from there you’ll unlock your tickets.”

You’ll actually receive a pair of tickets for volunteering and the deadline for signing up is this Sunday, May 23rd.

To sign up for volunteering log on to essence.com/actionforaccess