None of them have ever done programming of any sort...They want to be able to do minor mods in house or change things without having to go to me.

I hope you're sure you were really asked to teach them Perl, and I hope whoever's hiring you for this knows what he's doing, and that after a week's worth of lessons, the boss doesn't come to you and say something like "Did you teach them how to change the font color yet? That's mainly what I wanted."