Have your colleague read the tutorials/books suggested above, at least the first 100/150 pages to get a grasp of the basic notions.

Then have her subscribe to comp.lang.perl.misc or this site and read the messages and their replies, progressively trying to find an answer to the questions asked.

This is how I learned; I applied this technique for a 5 day course with a C programmer with twice my experience; it's very interesting for the student and you have no work to do.