COPLEY SQUARE — More than 300 guests attended the Ellie Fund’s Academy Award viewing party, which was held at the Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel. The 23rd annual Oscar “red carpet” soiree that is co-hosted by local ABC Network outlet, WCVB NewsCenter 5.

Since 1996, the Ellie Fund has hosted the Red Carpet Gala for the Academy Awards, with the money raised from the event supporting the Ellie Fund’s mission to provide essential support services for breast cancer patients to ease the stresses of everyday life.

The Ellie Fund has helped more than 800 families in the past year. This year’s goal is more than 1,000, according to the WCVB website. Through the Healing Together Patient and Family Care Program and Metastatic Breast Cancer Support Program, the Ellie Fund is able to provide nutritional and grocery assistance, transportation to medical appointments, childcare reimbursement, light housekeeping, prepared/delivered meals as well as integrative therapies free of charge to help relieve a patient’s burden while in treatment.

“I was so tired, I didn’t have the energy to chop things and go shopping and stuff,” Erin O’Malley, a breast cancer survivor told WCVB-TV. “I would tell any woman that was diagnosed to absolutely get in touch with the Ellie Fund because they take such good care of you.”

All photos by Bill Brett