I think my recommendation would have to be to get the Microsoft Office Suite. This includes a variety of programs all of which are standards in the business (and educational) world. Getting your users comfortable with Word, and Excel will help them get jobs and be useful to them almost anywhere. For e-mail, I'd recommend Outlook or it's "little brother" Outlook Express. For Web Browsing, Microsoft Internet Explorer is free and pretty much dominates the market. I recommend these choices because they are the programs that almost everyone encounters (all or at least some of the time) in the business world. Skills in basic web, e-mail and office software will be helpful in almost any walk of life.
As an introduction to this though, I'd start off with a "basic computing" class. Teach them the rudiments of powering on a computer, setting up a printer, typing in a document (Word Pad is okay for starters), printing it etc. Show them how to install a program. How to power down correctly. Show them how to add anti-virus software (!). Show them how to do basic maintenance (scandisk, defrag, delete temp files). Show them how to backup important work. These "good computing" skills and habits will be immeasurably helpful...as all of us who work on these things daily know all too well.
Good luck to you! Hope this helps....
