BENTONVILLE — A service club widely known for its mission to eradicate a debilitating disease is demonstrating a commitment to help end another problem: child abuse.

Representatives of four local Rotary clubs presented a combined $44,500 to the Southern Region National Child Protection Training Center at NorthWest Arkansas Community College during a ceremony Wednesday at the Bentonville Public Library.

The gifts will go toward a $3 million campaign to renovate and furnish a new facility for the center in the former Highlands Oncology building next to the college.

The planned facility will include a two-story mock home, a courtroom, medical and interview rooms to train professionals on techniques to identify and respond to child abuse situations.

Johnny Haney, a member of the Bentonville Noon Rotary Club, compared the fight against child abuse to Rotary’s longtime efforts to rid the world of polio. He said in 1985 1,000 children per day were paralyzed with polio; today that number is down to a few hundred per year.

More than 3 million cases of child abuse are reported each year, Haney said, adding that might represent only 20 percent of actual abuse cases.

“We have the opportunity today to address child abuse and neglect in a fabulous way, so similar to what Rotary has done with polio globally,” Haney said in a video presented at the ceremony.

The same video featured comments from an unidentified woman who said she had been gang-raped when she was 12.

“I went from being a very outgoing, fun-loving, optimistic child to a very closed-off, silent girl who could not talk to anybody,” the woman said.

She said a teacher at her school saw the physical and emotional signs of her abuse but didn’t report anything.

“Inside, I was crying out about what happened to me,” she said. “I didn’t have the voice to actually speak about it with her. Inside I was screaming.”

The college has served as the Southern Region National Child Protection Training Center since 2010. During that time it has trained thousands of child protection students and professionals, including police officers and social workers.

The college is one of two locations providing such training through the center. The other is at Winona State University in Minnesota.

The donations announced Wednesday included $25,000 from the Bentonville Noon Rotary Club and $15,000 from the Bentonville/Bella Vista Daybreak Rotary Club. The Bella Vista Sunrise Club gave $2,500 and the Rogers Early Risers donated $2,000.

Haney said Bentonville Noon’s donation came from the club’s foundation.

The two largest donations will go toward construction and renovation costs. The smaller donations will go toward equipment needed at the center.

As of Wednesday the center had raised $2,526,986 toward the cost of its new facility, about 84 percent of its goal. Fundraising began in October 2011. Officials hope to begin the renovation project sometime this year.

John Williams, governor of Rotary District 6110 and a Fayetteville resident, attended Wednesday’s ceremony. District 6110 includes 5,000 Rotary members from 81 clubs in parts of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Kansas.

He said supporting the center is something he thinks all the clubs in his district could embrace.

“Awareness is important,” Williams said. “Many of our clubs are unaware of what you’re doing with this center. The challenge is in marketing this project to all the other clubs.”

Bentonville Mayor Bob McCaslin was a guest speaker Wednesday. McCaslin, a Rotary member, said the oncology clinic saved the lives of countless cancer patients, and the same facility will continue to save lives once it is transformed into the training center.