In 2006, Nana Eyeson-Akiwowo received an urgent phone call from one of her uncles in Ghana: Her 64-year-old father had suffered a heart attack.

“When 300 people showed up I was like, ‘Oh, this may be bigger than I thought.’ That’s where the motivation to start something came from.”

As the first-generation American daughter of Ghanaian immigrants, Nana Eyeson-Akiwowo was raised with a deep sense of responsibility toward her community, a tradition she and her husband want to pass…