Ms. Butin, who calls her new project Afya Foundation of America — afya is Swahili for health — doesn’t believe in wasting supplies. She doesn’t believe in wasting time, either. In the time it takes her to get from the first floor of a hospital to the 17th, she’ll grill a nurse on the elevator about how to tell the difference between an operating room table and a heavy-duty stretcher (the table is heavier). If she’s waiting for a Jamba Juice at Whole Foods, she’ll ask the store manager if the market would donate cooking supplies for the kitchens of overseas hospitals in need (yes, she eventually heard from the Union Square store). It’s a straightforward system, really: She asks, and usually, people say yes.