Education, as a system and as a process, aims to design harmonious personalities of the educated, both as bearers of common axiological contents and as generators of societal values. Given the dynamic context and challenges of today’s society, the educational values of the younger generation are highly significant to be considered. One of these values is generosity. In order to give the world what it now needs, it is essential to contribute to the raising of awareness and cultivating of values with regard to sustainability by educating children accordingly, starting from an early age.

The hierarchy of values is actualized in a postmodern society, where, in the context of new cultural dynamics such as globalism, localism, interculturality and multiculturality, a new direction of educational values is emerging. Thus, the general values of Good, Truth, Utility, Beauty, and Health are reflected by new concerns such as technological progress, usefulness of applied sciences, economic management, care and concern for the environment in which we live, healthy nutrition, etc., together with generosity and sustainability ^[1][3].

In order to develop sustainability, education must transmit the component of active awareness, measured as a product of caring attitudes towards the environment and towards people and manifested through concrete actions of involvement, including civic and social participation. Ensuring sustainability is a crucial priority of the current needs of the world.

Based on Brown ^[2][4], we understand that the essential component of generosity is the act of kindness, by which we freely and abundantly give what is necessary to the beneficiary. In a similar manner, Diamond ^[3][5] approaches the human–nature relationship as mutual, but subscribes to it in the form of a social contract of reciprocal exchange through which humans must repay the respect due to nature by giving back, based on a social contract whereby the human relationship with nature is extrapolated to a shared ecological social capital.

“Sustainability is commonly treated as an ethical notion that helps us to decide on proper rules for sharing (environmental and natural) resources with future generations” ^[4][6], by ensuring that “the present needs are met while not compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” ^[5][7].

Interest in the role that education plays in sustainable development has increased in recent decades, and the framework documents formulate common global goals in promoting this specific issue, but the importance of education and the moral dimensions of learning from an early age have been less considered ^[6][8]. Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), as defined by UNESCO, enables every human being to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values needed to create a sustainable future ^[7][9].

Values, defined as abstract concepts of what society considers to be good, fair and worthy, reflect aspects of cultural identity ^[8][10]. We are aware that values, as moral-affective constructs, are established on the basis of three components: a cognitive component (knowledge, beliefs, reasoning, judgements), an affective component (feelings, motivations) and a behavioural component (actions, habits). It is known that complex values are learned during adolescence ^[9][10][11,12], but their foundations must be built from an early age, with the family being the first and perhaps the most important moral agent in a child’s life. The power of example unquestionably remains the most effective resource that the family can employ in shaping the child’s moral profile, wherein school extends the process of modelling through various educational contexts.

School, alongside family, as an agent of moral development, aims to build a framework suitable for the internalization of moral components in the structure of the educated personality in relation to the prescribed goals of education. The paramount focus of this educational area is to shape the child’s moral profile ^[11][13] by educating moral convictions and by instilling moral conduct.

In enabling children to internalize the values related to the environment, it is important to provide them with learning opportunities that empower them to collect information, to develop skills and to identify effective ways of addressing environmental issues. Therefore, education in this area becomes an ongoing, interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary learning process, wherein children, alongside teachers, parents and other community members, cooperate in order to deal with environmental challenges, given that they share the same values, the same mindset and the same ethics ^[12][13][14,15].

The issue of sustainable development involves moral values; educational institutions are instrumental in promoting these values ^[6][8]. Therefore, the moral dimension—reflected through moral values education—is a key element in achieving sustainable development, while early education can set the breeding ground for cultivating these values.

Based on the model of Uitto et al. ^[14][16], we embraced the fact that schools’ sustainability education should provide not only ecological experiences, but more importantly, school should connect pro-social and agency experiences through an approach that emphasizes pro-environmental values and self-efficacy for general ecological behaviour.

In such a setting, education would ideally strive to create a unity between these values and the bio-psycho-socio-cultural needs of each human personality. We are thus interested in the discussion of moral education as the promotion of the value of Good and Care (for oneself, for others and for the world), the formulation of which is a particular, specific content of axiological education as an umbrella concept.

Education has an important responsibility in assisting future adult citizens to be moral, as well as also caring, generous and respectful individuals, especially in the early formative childhood ^[15][17].

The undertaken responsibility in this setting lies within both the formal and informal education that takes place within the family. Children must be encouraged and taught from an early age about values and also supported in developing the right moral and civic attitudes. These can be achieved by civic education, which aims to train “well-informed citizens who are also caring, responsible and engaged, and possess critical thinking skills” ^[16][18]. Therefore, promoting active citizenship must encourage them to get involved in democratic bodies, in political proposals, in the implementation of local, national and regional policies, beyond charity and volunteering. In trying to guide civic education towards this direction, the borders of formal learning are being crossed; therefore, other actors in society have an educational stake: “how people practice their citizenship shapes what they learn: there is a ‘hidden curriculum’ in society at large, as well as in the school” ^[17][19].

Stakeholders in civil society, in which youth can practice civic values, are advocacy groups, institutions (religious, academic) and non-governmental organisations ^[18][20]. “Civil society is composed of a plurality of actors, ranging from environmental NGOs, epistemic communities and social movements to civil society organizations” ^[19][21]. Civil society’s roles vary from collecting data and disseminating information, to counselling and support, to policy drafting, to implementation, to environmental management and governance, to advocacy ^[18][20]. In most cases, civil society and local communities implement environmental policies that promote sustainable development ^[20][22]. The participation of civil society in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2030 Agenda) is widely acknowledged, given the stakeholders’ role in the community, their contribution with regard to the identifying of needs, in the setting of priorities, in developing and implementing policies, and also in enabling the engagement of all actors in order to fully participate in this process ^[21][23]. This valuable cooperation between civil society actors and governments, and their involvement in the policymaking process, are key elements that ensure a “good environmental governance” ^[22][24].

One key solution to the challenges of today’s world relies on the human resource, provided by today’s youth as the opinion leaders and decision makers of the future.

The common UN Sustainable Development Policy agenda comprises the joint efforts, through strategic programs, promoted at different community levels. It is through activating a global Education for Sustainable Development partnership that we can bring cross-sector stakeholders together in order to share knowledge, technology and resources, to shape good practices and bring numerous positive impacts.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), internationally agreed upon in 2015, represent the objectives of governmental policies that are proposed for the development of a global agenda for development that is both equitable and sustainable, in social, economic and environmental terms. This is aimed at investments in healthcare and educational services, crucial to children’s development, to fulfil children’s potential and enable them to later contribute to society. The achievement of these targets helps to secure the future for generations to come ^[23][25].

In this context, we point to several programs and interventions mentioned in the UN Youth Strategy (UNEP), which seeks to engage 1.8 billion young people in driving global efforts to promote a peaceful, equitable and sustainable world. Kids’ Corner is a digital classroom that gathers more than 50,000 young people from across Australia, the US, the UK and China, aiming to impact one million young people worldwide by the end of 2022. Another major project is the UK-based Wastebuster, which promotes environmental messages throughout its campaigns. Such examples include the Clean Seas Campaign, Beat Pollution, UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, Wild for Life and others. This partnership will roll out the campaign in 76 countries, representing a combined network of over 250,000 schools and 56 million young people worldwide. The United Nations Environment Programme hosts the Sustainable United Nations facility in Geneva, which supports UN organisations towards tackling climate neutrality and environmental sustainability. Greening the Blue is another initiative promoted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Facility, which shares best practices and sustainability initiatives within the UN through communication activities ^[24][26].

When it comes to generosity, the motivations for giving and the amount given are influenced by the availability of economic and social resources. Distinct degrees of resource availability are represented by varied “circles of generosity” radiating at different distances ^[25][27]. Safra et al. ^[26][28] show that from an early age (6–7 years), children from higher socio-economic backgrounds are significantly more generous than those from poorer backgrounds. When it comes to the level of education of parents, it seems that the number of years of schooling is positively correlated with the amount of donations and volunteering. This is in addition to the greater amount of resources available to a family from a higher socioeconomic class. This could be explained in part by the fact that education facilitates the development of higher levels of empathy, better communication skills and improved problem-solving abilities ^[27][28][29][29,30,31]. On the other hand, self-interested motives can often lie behind generosity: the desire for a positive image in society, reputation and avoidance of guilt ^[25][30][31][27,32,33]. For example, it has been found that rich people who are generous, as opposed to those who are not generous, are perceived as deserving to be rich, having acquired wealth with difficulty, generally attributing wealth to internal factors ^[32][34].

Studies conducted in an attempt to understand why some individuals help more than others reveal significant gender differences, with girls generally being more generous than boys ^{[31][33][34][35][36]}[33,35,36,37,38]. Women are more generous than men because of a greater awareness of the costs of generous behaviour. Thus, women are more generous than men when the total monetary cost of generosity is low ^[37][39]. Empathy is also more present among women than men and seems to be an important factor in explaining the gender gap ^[38][40]. However, there are also studies showing that when indicators of social and human capital (level of schooling, hours of work, economic level, education, religiosity, etc.) are controlled for, gender gaps are smaller ^[39][41].

In addition, people attending religious services are more likely to give due to the influence of leaders in their religious congregations calling upon them to do so ^[25][27]. Religiosity is strongly correlated to high degrees of generosity and helping in general, with volunteering work being done not just for those in one’s own church ^{[40][41][42][43]}[42,43,44,45].

Previous research has addressed the link between generosity and ecological/eco-friendly attitudes towards the environment ^{[44][45][46][47][48]}[46,47,48,49,50], and some claim that environmental attitudes can even be considered as a form of generosity ^[25][27].

Stern and Dietz ^[48][50] note that preoccupation with/for the environment is linked to egoistic, social-altruistic, and biospheric values. In more current research, Stern’s ^[47][49] opinion is that the most powerfully implicated values in the activation of personal pro-medium norms are altruistic or auto-transcendent values.

Ideas in favour of helping motivate people to act in favour of the environment are often based on the costs or advantages to a human group, such as a community, ethnic group, nation-state or humanity as a whole ^[45][47]. It seems that there is no distinction in the public consciousness between valuing nature for its own sake and valuing nature for the benefits it provides to people. The authors believe that the values that support pro-social behaviours are remarkably similar to those that drive pro-environmental behaviour. Only the “recipient” differs between these two categories: other humans in one example, or all living organisms and non-living nature in the other.

The authors of a recent study found that members of pro-environment organisations are more likely to help other members than non-members. Otto et al. ^[49][51] consider that pro-environmental activities are driven by generalized pro-social willingness and (partially) explained by domain connectivity.

Previous research suggests that there is a correlation between generosity and the sustainable attitudes of children and youth. One study, investigating three attitudes about money that adolescents are likely to internalize—frugality, materialism and generosity—revealed that subjects who score low on frugality or generosity, or high on materialism, are unlikely to engage in environmentally friendly behaviours, since these economic attitudes play at least some role in such activities ^[44][46]. Connections have also been identified between literacy, science, arts and civic skills of generosity, as well as ecological practices of generosity engaging children, school staff and community policy makers.

Within the new context brought by contemporary shortcomings, the concern for the environment and for all living beings, expressed by the overall sustainable attitude, may represent one of the correlates of generosity, although it may also exist in the absence of the condition of “giving” similar to the self-sufficiency variable observed by Herzog and Price ^[25][27]. To explain this premise, we recall the main purpose of sustainability, which is to protect and to ensure a secure future in which passive (preventive and consumption-minimizing) behaviours are as important as active action. Recognizing self-sufficiency among the correlates of generosity is similar to considering a reduced ecological footprint as a form of giving, in the sense that reducing the use of resources constitutes a gift of the giver. The above-mentioned authors (who put forward this meaning) indicate that we should not limit the understanding of generosity to the giving of resources, which can only be done from advantageous positions, but also to include the reservation of resources from depletion as a form of giving towards the environment and towards the planet (here, by giving we mean generosity). Furthermore, the socio-relational settings may also have an impact, by being more or less conducive to giving, along with the perceptions of self-giving as compared to others’ participation ^[25][27].

Sustainable global generosity is becoming an increasingly important practice for future generations, who will face even greater environmental dilemmas. In this regard, according to Liu ^[50][52], ecological generosity expressed in civic conduct is a key competence for our global future, being a competence that must be taught to youth, in civic and cultural institutions, particularly in primary schools. The author extends the meaning of the concept of generosity to the sum of people’s proactive behaviours and attitudes over time, stipulating that the civic expressions of generosity depend on the cultivation of generosity practices across time and cultures.

The issue of generosity is expanded by Herzog and Price ^[25][27] into a broader conceptualization that preserves and combines the different types into nine specific forms of generosity, all of which are given freely to enhance the well-being of others. Among these, we recall the following correlations, relevant for our study: sustainability giving, the contribution of efforts towards environmental resources, volunteering, and giving time and services for charitable causes. 

Values such as sustainability and caring for our surroundings are responses to the challenges of today’s world. Given that values as cultural constructs are subject to change and influenced by cultural-historical dynamics, we are facing a new cultural reality, wherein a primary goal is to equip the new generations for living and for acting in a sustainable way.