Mimi La Camera retired as the president of the Freedom Trail Foundation last year, but the 71 year-old Back Bay resident is not the retiring type. After 40 years of running Boston non-profits, she was looking for a new project.

La Camera found one after a visit to the Sarah Greenwood School on Glenway Street. She was stunned to find that the K-8 bilingual school that features dual language learning in English and Spanish did not have a functioning library.

“I started going over there almost daily in the beginning of January and plowing into really just a mess of piled up books that had been moved around the school four times in the last four years,” said La Camera. “And they were really, really dirty and out of date, and pretty well beaten up.”

This week, the Greenwood is well on its way to re-opening in September with a newlibrary of roughly 6,000 books.

“We’re going to launch it in September. All the bookcases are in place, there’s new carpeting, there’s new paint,” she said.

From January through the beginning of May, La Camera began the process of “weeding”— sifting through books and throwing out those that are beaten up and out of date.

In the meantime, La Camera also began to raise funds for new books and furniture. Her efforts would be met with extreme generosity.

“Bob’s Furniture has stepped up to the plate and given us all of the bookcases for the library, which is an enormous generous gift. Another family foundation, the Fish Family Foundation, donated money for carpeting,” said La Camera. “The fellows who paint my house just recently started their own painting company and they came over with a dozen guys one night and painted the room.

“US Trust came over last week and sorted the books that were on the shelves and things, so there were about 12 people who volunteered for the day—five hours, which is an enormous amount of manpower,” said La Camera.

She expects the library to have a positive effect on the students and their academic achievements.

“These kids, they don’t have ready access to any books at all, so they really have to have a library,” said La Camera. “There’s been research that indicates that academic achievement happens better and more successfully when you have access to books and when you have a library.”

However, her work won’t stop after she provides these children with books and a space to read. She intends to incorporate special events and activities into the library.

“The next phase of this is to develop programming in the library, because it’s now a beautiful, quiet, unique space in the school with very little distractions except books,” said La Camera. “We’ll be able to have visiting authors and we’ll be able to have performers come in.”

She says events like these, while they are not unheard of in Boston, are more likely to be found in suburban communities. She wants to elevate the level of this programming in Boston Public Schools.

Some future events at the Sarah Greenwood Library include a one-woman show about Sojourner Truth and a musical performance by a Latino guitarist.

La Camera says she would volunteer at any school, but the Greenwood School has a unique quality about it that makes her project even more special.

“Their numbers are going up over the last three years, so it’s creating now an energy in the school, which is really very interesting,” she said. “And people can rally around this, which is great.”